By Rachel Sauer
Special to The Daily Sentinel
Autumn! A time of mellow, dappled sunlight and leaf-crunching strolls through the golden gloaming to arrive home bathed in the cinnamon scent of warm apple crisp. A time of yearning reflection on the inexorable changes of season, on Earth turning, on the cycles of life and death and rebirth.
On the flippin’ mice in my garage.
Yes, so far this week I have caught two mice in the garage, and while I’m pleased to learn that I’m still capable of typing even beyond the grave – because clearly these discoveries killed me dead – it doesn’t solve the DEFCON 1 crisis currently happening at my house.
I mean, where are they even coming from??? I know this is something of an autumn occurrence, and that as the weather cools all the horrible vermin in the whole world seek shelter where THEY DO NOT BELONG. But I spent several hours lurking around the garage in Captain Ahab-like mania, trying to spy where they were coming in, and found nothing. Nothing!
The only thing to do was go inside and apologize to my cats.
They’ve been acting weird(er) for the past week, spending hours in full loaf at the door between the house and the garage. I get up in the morning and there they are, staring at the door in that unnerving way cats have – the way that makes you think your house is haunted or someone with a machete and mommy issues is outside.
“You guys are being weird,” I informed them more than once.
*blink*
“Seriously, you’re freaking me out. What are you hearing?”
*blink*
“My will isn’t updated! WHAT’S OUT THERE??”
In true cat fashion, they couldn’t even be bothered to look at me, but continued in their lifelong mission of driving me to facial tics.
As much as I hated to face the truth, obviously it was mice. I guess I could have just let the cats in the garage to solve the problem, but the garage is also where I keep the dangerous tools and oil on the floor.
Plus, I’m often stunned by their seeming lack of any sense of self-preservation. Example (what I imagine goes through their heads): “Here is something on the rug and I don’t know what it is. I should probably eat it.”
So, I would need to deal with The Mouse Situation. I got what are called “humane” mouse traps, shaped like a tunnel into which mice are lured by the scent of peanut butter and cheese (it doesn’t necessarily have to be peanut butter and cheese, I just thought mice might be drawn by the scent of the world’s grossest sandwich).
They spring a door at one end of the tunnel and blammo! You have a trapped, terrified mouse that is now going to poop all over everything and not even get the cheese or peanut butter because that’s not how the traps I got are designed.
I grudgingly set the traps and trudged out to the garage the next morning with all the gaiety and whimsy that one approaches the guillotine. Aaaaaaand… yep, there was a mouse.
Dang it.
Even worse, it was cute, with its little ears and little whiskers and twitching little nose. I felt for the thing, who probably entered the trap with a “Yay! Gross sandwich!” then sprang the door and thought, “Aw, crap.”
Anyway, now I had a mouse to deal with. I did some hasty and definitely incorrect mental arithmetic to determine how far away I’d need to release the mouse so that it was an insurmountable return distance. At one point I thought, “OK, I’m 6’1” and my stride is like, what, 25 inches? 30 inches? So, if this mouse is, say, two inches long, not counting its tail, its stride would be, I don’t know, an inch? But don’t they hop? I’ve also seen them scurry, though. I just don’t know enough about rodent perambulation. So, if I release it half a mile away, that would be comparable to me getting released in maybe Delta? Or Montrose? Would I walk home from there, or just figure I lived there now?”
I scuttled about a third of a mile from my house and let it out with the admonition, “DON’T COME BACK.”
The next morning, it had come back. Was it the same mouse? Probably not, but I felt like they should know my warning not to come back applied to their whole species! Heck, to their whole family and order!
Point being, I clearly have to move. Can I borrow somebody’s truck?