Out of Sight and Out of My Mind
Several months ago, my husband discovered we had a mouse in our home. When he told me he had seen one, I howled with ridiculous girly terror. I was hor-rif-ied and stupidly scared to walk around the home without underwear (for fear of being snatch-bitten. For reals.).
Determined to get me back into my pantie-free glory, Patrick promptly went out and got snap traps. Within two days, the traps did their job and Patrick regained his title of Man of the House (he had previously lost it by spending a weekend watching movies on the Diva Channel). When I saw Mickey post-mortem and realized how itty-bitty he was, I actually felt rather bad. Poor little thing. He was much smaller and cuter than my mind led me to first believe (except for having his neck smashed in, of course). When I was first confronted with the idea of a mouse in our house, I had imagined this big, horrible dirty rat that could spring out from a bag and bite my cooter at any moment ... or crawl into the bed and nip my bum (why I thought this mouse would be so hostile toward my nether regions is for Freudians to figure out). But the little mouse in our snap trap wasn't anything like that. He was a Beatrix Potter-like mouse. All little and darling. I imagined him shyly giving cookie crumbs to his little mouse sweetheart and accepting invitations to delightful afternoon tea parties with rabbits and hedgehogs. Sipping mulled wine out of thimbles. But not any more. Because WE killed the shit out of him.
But despite feeling bad, we kept traps around for a month and a half and ... nothing. So we figured our problem was solved and I went about drinking my feelings away.
Cue last week. Construction in the building has resulted in some moving and shaking that has clearly not only aggravated the human residents, but also whatever's been living in the walls. Mickey 2.0 has been spotted.
Patrick has been too busy with work to go get new traps, and I've been too guilt-ridden to play that active a role in the whole thing ... so mousy is presumably still with us (haven't seen him since the initial spotting). Even though I now *know* it's probably another cute one, I'm still oddly afraid of being surprised by it. In other words, I'm scared of getting scared.
My solution has been to scare it before it can scare me. So, all day, I walk as loud as I can, smacking tables, slapping counters and knocking on walls and doors. My life has become a lamer, paranoid, unchoreographed version of Stomp Out Loud.
But Stomp has got to stop (in my home. And around the world, actually). When you feel ridiculous even when you’re all by yourself, you know you’ve gone over the crazy line. My options are to refuse to be scared of seeing the mouse, getting some traps or buying one of those hilarious hamster balls and finding a way lure Mickey 2.0 inside it.
I’ll let you know how the hamster ball goes.