T’was the night before Christmas when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; . . .
WOULD THAT THIS WERE TRUE!!
I was using the bathroom the other evening, minding my own business, when a mouse darted around the corner on a tear. “Arrrrrgh!” I cried. The mouse, as startled as I was, lost its balance, immediately righted itself, and continued on to the utility room at warp speed and disappeared. But I wasn't fooled. I knew it was there somewhere.
“There’s a mouse in here!” I screeched.
So, we gathered as many mousetraps as we could find – four in all, and Mike loaded them with peanut butter and placed them strategically – one in the utility room, one in the living room, one in my sewing room, AND MOST ESPECIALLY, one for the pantry. Recalling the time that a mouse ate its fill of nuts out of the nut and grain bread leaving a pile of fine bread crumbs on the counter, I immediately put the bread in the cupboard.
We didn’t trap the mouse overnight, but I noticed that the peanut butter had apparently been stolen from the trap in the pantry, so Mike exchanged that trap for the one with the “hair trigger.” Within half an hour, we caught that guy!
“We’ll leave the traps out for a while to catch the other one,” Mike said.
“There’s another one?” I asked.
“Oh, probably,” he responded. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said
that.”
But I know he's right. We may -- or may not -- have another mouse in the house right now, but the potential always exists.
Ina never speaks of the mice, rats, or other rodents, but we know she had them, and they are not to be tolerated! She probably took them in stride better than I do, and her foodstuff was different -- less processed food in boxes and bags -- and she undoubtedly protected what she had in jars and cans. They say that mice are especially attracted to nuts, but take it from me – they’ll eat most anything in a pinch, including soap, and they like paper and fuzzy stuff for their nests. And if you feed your dog kibble -- well, that's a big attraction. KW
[The Christmas card posted here was sent by my parents to the families of their piano students.]
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