I was inspired by Joshilyn’s tale of mouse adventuring over at her stellar blog. You must read it, by the way. It will make you spit things on your monitor. Joshilyn is MY HERO. And it’s not just because she said to VOTE FOR ME. Hey, did you know you can vote once every 24 hours? It’s true. Also not the point…which was…OH THAT’S RIGHT, the mouse.

Sometime last week I was standing in the kitchen, cutting up potatoes for dinner. Mom was leaning against the counter, and we were chatting.

At some point during our conversation A MOUSE came scurrying out from under the cupboard behind me. Mom says it was just ADVANCING upon my feet in a casual, cheeky sort of way.

Now, Mom knows how I feel about mice. There was that one event a while back, wherein a SINGLE SOLITARY MOUSE got in my kitchen. Its presence forced me to BOIL MY HOUSE and DOUSE IT IN BLEACH. I’m not scared of mice, per se. I’m SKEEVED by mice. They’re DIRTY GROSS THINGS.

So, Mom knew I could react in a somewhat…intense manner on the subject of diseased vermin. She didn’t want to ALARM me, so she thought, “DON’T SAY MOUSE! It will FREAK HER OUT.”

Instead she pointed at something behind me and started sort of SQUEEKING.

“IT! THERE’S! OH NO! DON’T! EEEK!”

I froze, trying to decipher her sudden soliloquy of alarm. WHAT? Did you HAVE A STROKE? Did SATAN just pop out of the CUPBOARD? WHAT? Her eyes were wide and her finger trembled as she searched for the right words.

By the time I turned around, the mouse had crawled back into the opening under the cupboard. I kneeled down and peered into the dark, where I could see beady little eyes gleaming diseasedly back at me. I turned to fix Mom with a stern look.

“I didn’t want to scare you,” she said weakly.

Well, the joke was on her, because while we were gone that evening SOME ANIMAL in our house, some PET that we FEED and BRUSH and LOVE, took care of the mouse. And when I say “took care” I mean she TOOK IT IN HER MOUTH, MAULED IT UNTIL DEAD, AND SPAT IT OUT ON THE FLOOR OF THE SUN ROOM, A SODDEN TINY NUGGET OF FUR.                                                                                    

I don’t know if it was Claire or Carmi, but I do know this:

I have to boil my house AND my pets.

Ick.

But HEY! At least MOM didn’t FREAK ME OUT!

Comments

[Sheryl]

*Shudder* Nothing furry should reside in my house, unless I bought it at the pound, or left it too long in the fridge.

[Jensgalore]

I had a roommate do this to me once, only it was with a really big spider on the wall behind me. She was acting so oddly that I was scared to look around, lest there be, yes, Satan himself standing behind me. :D

I couldn't help wondering as I read this, though - when you were a teenager, would it ever have occured to your mother that you would have grown up to be someone who would ever, under any circumstances, boil the house? Or did you manage to avoid that messy teen stage?

[Mir]

Ahhahahahaha. Have I mentioned that I heart your mom??

[Heather]

Ok. You all are much nicer than I am... having just moved back off of the farm... I could thrill you with the tales of me killing mices with my bare hands. Ok, not bare hands, plastic bag covered hands... and I don't know if it was really dead... it was in the bag which was smacked violently against the porch and then I wrapped that bag in another bag and walked it all the way to the outside garbage bin. It may have been blunt force trauma that did the disgusting pest it... could have been suffocation, not sure. But I am farm girl, here me spaz out on the mouse.

[Amanda]

It's my mom, not me, with the horrific fear of mice. I have vivid childhood memories of her standing on top of the kitchen island, screaming bloody murder while my dad chased the mouse around with a hammer in his grip.

Yes. A hammer. He's an engineer. It was the first thing he could think of.

[Rowan]

You have a freaking wicked blog :)

[lizardek]

Thank god your mom didn't freak you out, indeed. And thank you for the link to Joshilyn!

[joshilyn]

Yes, THANKS for that link. And you have to admit he is CUTE tho, come ON.

[mark]

Freezing and boiling in the same composition.

Errrr.............

Your realtime prose evocations seems to be your style. Have you considered offering scripts to TV?

[Karin]

We never had mice (or voles where I grew up) in the house, no doubt because we always had cats. However, my husband still laughs at the set of traps I bought shortly after we got married when I spotted a baby mouse in the house. We never caught it, but it never came back, either. Thankfully our family cat was smart enough to take her catches to my mother or sister, because I surely would have had to boil and bleach my window sill if she'd done such a thing.