Mouse Count

If you're looking at the title here and expecting something kinda cute, like the children's book of the same name by Ellen Stoll Walsh, I'd like to introduce myself, because clearly, we haven't met. Hi, I'm wyo, and I'm always sarcastic, generally snide, and not at all cute. And yes, you may safely presume that the following tale of woe is not so much adorable. At all, really. But without further ado, let's get on with the story ...

Although it wasn't even Monday, the day did not begin well. I had a telephone interview slated for mid-afternoon, so I wanted to spend at least part of the morning preparing for that, but the Internet promptly went down for the count of two hours, and then I had to call Unemployment Insurance.

I've had four major problems with Unemployment Insurance in the past two months during which I've been sucking up their scant "benefits," and the one thing that all of these issues have had in common is the fact that each one of them stemmed directly from my idiotic insistence on telling those "friendly" folks the truth. So please feel free to damn me for my repeated stupidity, because even though I know it will result in nothing but trouble, I KEEP DOING IT. Say whatever you like, really, because I'm sure I've already said it myself.

Anyway, the latest case was directly related to the issue in which I'd been denied THREE WEEKS of small—but important to me—UI paychecks, so I was hoping to preempt a similar dry stretch by calling UI directly, instead of reporting That Thing which would cause them pause over the Internet. Because if I did that, I'd still end up having to call them, see, so I thought, why not jump straight to Step 2?

Unfortunately, UI doesn't have a community chest of free passes to Step 2, and all sitting through the horrid, elevatorized porn music that plays when you're on hold for "the next available representative" got me was an entirely unsympathetic directive to go back to Step 1 anyway, and then? Then? WAIT TWO HOURS and call UI anyway. Oh, and yes, this would probably result in delay and/or denial of benefits again. Despite the fact that the outside income I would be receiving would not arrive for FOUR MORE WEEKS.

So I hung up on the cheerless soul who'd only been the messenger without a word of thanks—even though I'd half expected to hear something this aggravating anyway—choking on tears of frustration before letting them out in a rush. And that's when I heard FRISKitty's distinctly unusual chittering in the basement. I dabbed ineffectually at my pouring tears as I rounded the corner to see what had inspired her unusually verbose burst, blinked twice to clear my vision, and promptly lost it.

Because what FRISKitty had in her clutches was a most delightful toy. For her. For me, the sight of a staggering baby mouse being tossed and caught and probably shitting its nonexistent pants under the predatory gaze of a former homeless kitty meant two things, neither of them pleasant:

1. I would have to dispose of this creature.
2. There were going to be more of them.

To further emphasize the issues here, I should like to point out two facts that you, my dearest (and singular) reader, may not be aware of:

1. Touching a mouse creeps me the hell out.
2. Mice aren't big on achieving zero population growth, i.e., they have LITTERS, not "only" mice.

Therefore, I urged FRISKitty to not permit her quarry to escape, and dashed off to the vicinity of the litterbox, where I kept a box of disposable gloves. Thus arming myself, I still couldn't fathom TOUCHING the rodent, so I brought an old plastic bowl—which had dust in the bottom to prove it hadn't been used in years—in the vain hope of capturing the mouse inside without having to so much as poke it with one gloved finger.

So, yeah, my plan didn't exactly go off without a hitch, and I took it in near-hysterical stride, sobbing about how much I hated mice, and moving a stack of 20-gallon totes so I could follow the mouse—which, of course, DID escape my lame efforts to scoop it up (it was young, but it wasn't stupid)—and thereby attracting Little Girl's attention from way up on the second floor.

With the arrival of an impressionable audience, I got enough of a grip on myself to explain that my problem here was entirely unreasonable, and although I did not like mice in my house, I had nothing against the creatures in the wild. And that's when I realized that I had another problem.

I felt sorry for the damn thing. Neither it nor its mother had anything in mind inside my house other than their own safety and comfort. Nor, of course, did I have anything in mind other than MY own safety and comfort, and that of my family. But someone here was going to suffer and quite likely die, even without any actual malevolence or evil intent.

It wasn't fair, and I was just as frustrated with the insolvable ethical dilemma of the eviction of an already-tormented mouse baby as I had been with the hopeless unemployment insurance conundrum. And having no recourse other than the obvious in either case was aggravating to me in the extreme, so I rehashed the situation over and over in the few moments before I located the cringeing mouse, extracted it from its crevice between the wall and some old end tables that served as an extra storage unit for exercise equipment, and carried it outside in my hand.

The mouse squeaked weakly during the twenty feet or so of that journey, and even though I was doing pretty much the same thing—and feeling the hair on the back of my neck rise in full creeped-outedness—I still couldn't shake the sense of sympathy I felt. It wasn't anthropomophized, either. Rather, it stemmed from simple shared existence in delicate, mammalian form ... a fragility of mere living that I recognized and the mouse did not, but which was about to impose itself on the mouse regardless. Only it wasn't a vague, impartial death sentence brought on by an act of God or nature—it was me, in my house that surely belonged less in the is spot than the mouse and its family.

And although none of that stopped me from throwing the mouse as far as I could out the door, neither did the niggling, nasty thought leave me that day, or in the days since. And I felt it burn with the next mouse that FRISKitty brought upstairs to show us, and the one she chased under the bag of old aluminum cans after that. And the one she was playing with in the living room, and the one that she brought to the entryway. And the one that almost escaped into Little Girl's room, and the one that she dropped outside of the bathroom.

I've counted seven mice thus far, not one of which has been the mother. The traps are set and the likely entry hole—a small arch above the pipes that bring water and natural gas into the house, from which the previous expanding-foam plugging had apparently been removed in mouse-sized bites—has been plugged. FRISKitty's patrols of the basement have all but ceased, which should make me feel more secure, but doesn't quite.

I used to love that book when I read it to Little Girl in days past, when she was littler still. Now I'm glad she chose to donate it in her last effort to clear her bookshelves enough so as to actually hold books. I just don't want to count mice anymore.