When the Call of the Wild Comes, Please Say I’m Not In
My husband and I are not really outdoors people, not in the sense of hunting and fishing and getting really touchy-feely with nature by feasting on the day’s kill by the eerie glow of a butane lantern.
For starters, aside from during certain hardship assignments that were a condition of his employment, I have never known my husband to sleep outside the viewing range of a TV. To achieve an optimum dream state, he likes a remote control within easy reach.
Still, even my husband and I can recognize that wonderfully primitive, primordially human urge to do away with a so-called lesser species if one finds it appetizing or failing that, repulsive.
We have mice.
Or, God knows, maybe rats. And possibly other mutants of nature as well. I don’t want to know.
But, inexplicably, it seems I am forced to.
When my husband discovered some droppings on top of the freezer in the garage, he called me out to inspect them “to make sure.”
And I went.
(I have also been known to fall for similar entreaties that begin, “Eeew. This is horrible! Here, taste it!”)
So I diagnosed the problem right away: mouse, maybe mice, probably big, maybe even gigantic, undoubtedly brazen. Remedy: death. Then, of course, “You do it . . .
“Because you’re the boy.”
But this man of the house mulled over the possibilities. We talked about methods of annihilation, strategies for selective death--that is, something that would not also kill the cats, our daughters and/or us.
In other words, we did nothing. And that way no one got hurt.
Then, while alone recently in the house for three days, my husband got it into himself to clear away some of the detritus of our family life. Digging through a plastic pail full of toys in the garage, he saw something move, weakly, as if its batteries were run down, at the bottom.
The tiny mouse, a mere child , had fallen into the pail and couldn’t get out. My husband figures it starved to death.
Yet realistically, this toy deathtrap method of rodent extermination, while offering possibilities, doesn’t seem all that efficient.
On the other hand, it should be noted that it did produce an actual body, and I was happily unavailable to inspect it. . . .
Another plus to such an extermination strategy is that it might deter my husband from sticking his hands and nose into carefully chosen storage locations around the house, such as that which contains a variety of chafing dishes and fondue pots that hold great sentimental value for someone who is reportedly very near and dear to him.
And besides , within hours of the first mouse casualty, another, much larger, infinitely more disgusting rodent showed up, deceased with no help from us, on the curb in front of our house.
(The cause of the miscreant’s death was not readily apparent, nor its relationship to our daughters’ toys.)
Nonetheless, in the best hunter/noble warrior tradition, my husband has been bragging about this beast for a while--”And I’m not kiddin’, its tail was this long . . . “--which is surely the best part of being an outdoorsy type. In addition, no camping was involved.
Long-term, of course, neither my husband nor I believe rodent suicide to be a viable strategy of pest control. I mean, so far it’s worked for us, but one can’t be sure what other factors might affect said animals’ psychological well-being during the next full moon.
And while homeowner nonviolence is certainly to be applauded, it is but a fine line to cross toward full-blown wimpiness. Which, naturally, cannot be tolerated.
(Hey, maybe one of us could stand at the door of the garage and state in a strong, assertive tone that all uninvited guests must leave the premises at once!)
In the meantime, however, it is to be assumed that the freeloaders are ruffling the bedsheets, if you catch my drift. I’m guessing that the casualties among the ranks haven’t even been missed.
So my husband went out and bought some mousetraps the other day. The guy at the hardware store regaled him with his own manly rodent stories, told him how to set the traps and advised him to bait them with cheese, like in the cartoons.
Except it’s been a few days now, and the mice aren’t biting. The Cheddar on the single trap that my husband set is getting hard.
Of course a friend who used to be an Orkin pest control man says we’re going about this all wrong. He says peanut butter is the ticket and that the traps (plural) belong on the floor, positioned against the wall so that they will snap down on the vermin even if they decide they’re not hungry after all.
But, I don’t know, it sounds so messy to me. And, you know, there could be blood.
As I said, we’re not really the outdoors type.
