I've been debating whether to blog about my recent rodent encounters, and inspired by Sam at Feral, I've decided to do it. WARNING: Do not read this if you're squeamish or eating dinner!
One of the charming things about living in a cabin are mice. If it's an old cabin, it's just about impossible to plug every hole. They say that a mouse can fit through a hole no bigger than a dime. When I moved in nearly eight years ago, I took special care disinfecting and sealing the kitchen cupboards with caulking, and they've not yet penetrated that fortress, thank goodness. However, despite tufts of steel wool protruding from walls and floors and corners, the little bastards still find their way in.
I think mice are cute. From a distance. And not in my house. I'm an animal-loving person, known to catch-and-release wasps and build escape hatches out of toilet paper for spiders trapped in sinks. But when a mouse -- a potential hantavirus-harboring, turd-dropping, nest-building mouse -- enters these four walls, it's taking its life into its own tiny paws.
Usually, they're shortly dispatched by Tango -- often in the wee, dark hours, after which he likes to wake me for some feline lovin', the kill apparently having made him amorous. Typical male. Luna, the new girl, likes to hunt, but seems more interested in sport than a clean kill. I once watched her through the window as she dallied with a mouse in the driveway for upwards of 10 minutes. I called my best friend, Michelle, agonizing: "What do I do?! She's torturing it!" Michelle, ever the pragmatist, calmly replied: "It tenderizes the meat."
I have a mousetrap for backup. I can't bear the traditional, hands-on kind, so I sprung (ha!) for a fancy, black plastic trap where the mouse goes in, but doesn't come out. It's possible to empty the trap and reset it without ever seeing anything beyond an inch or two of pointy tail sticking out. The guy at Ace described it as a "woman-friendly trap," and I might have gotten offended if he hadn't been so right.
The trap is in the mudroom right now, and it needs to be emptied. I was sitting here at the computer last night when I heard it snap. I could probably catch a lot more mice if it didn't take me a day or two to psych myself into emptying the thing.
On Friday I made a horrific discovery under the fridge. Two mouse corpses, in varying states of decay. One dry and dessicated, the other damp, moldy and dissolving into the drip tray. I swear, I was ready to pack up and move to a condo. Or better yet, a bubble.
A gallon of bleach later, though, I'm back to enjoying the rare joys of the cabin and its ranch surroundings. The scent of crabapple blossoms, cut grass and cattle. The soul-warming satisfaction of log walls, intricate antique doors, dappled sunlight through white curtains. The precious quiet, broken only by the screech of magpies, the wind in the chokecherry trees and a small plane buzzing somewhere up in the big sky.
The condo can wait.
