Mizzouse in the Hizzouse

We have a mouse.

Until very, very recently, I would have qualified the previous statement with allegedly.

The mouse chronicles began a few months ago. I was upstairs on the computer; the child and husband were in the kitchen. He was manufacturing our family dinner for the evening, and she was sitting at the kitchen table in full-on Natalie extreme motor-mouth mode, consisting of a seemingly endless barrage of non-sequitur questions and incomprehensible ramblings seasoned with occasional, spontaneous bursts of song from High School Musical 2 or humming the Indiana Jones score. It was a typical night in our household.

Then I heard the scream.

I ran downstairs to find the child standing on a chair, flailing about wildly like some crazed circa 1950's cartoon housewife, gesturing toward one of the far corners of the kitchen floor and sobbing hysterically, and my husband trying, unsuccessfully, to calm her down.

"amouseamouseamouseamouseMOMMYAMOUSE!"

I met my husbands eyes.

"I take it you saw a mouse?"

Apparently, a small mouse had appeared from underneath the stove, ran across the kitchen floor four feet and disappeared underneath the dishwasher. It's not entirely surprising; our house was built in 1905, and we have a partially unfinished basement. October in Seattle brings with it a definitive drop in temperature, so yeah, not shocking that a field mouse decided to take his act indoors. We reasoned with the child that the mouse had probably just lost its way, it was much more scared of her, blah blah blah please calm down. She sucked in her lower lip, wiped her tears and sniffled once.

"Can we name him Remy?"

Two nights later, my husband and I were in the kitchen together, co-manufacturing the family dinner and engaged in our typical mating ritual of sarcastic banter. At some point, he approached me from behind, wrapped his arms around me, spun me around, and began hugging and kissing me sweetly. A very romantic moment...until I noticed his eyes wide open and looking down to the right. Then directly into mine. I asked him what was up.

"Oh, you know. Not much. Except that while we were hugging the mouse ran across my foot and back under the range".

We began discussing our de-mousification alternatives.

After a little help from Google, we discovered that we really only had four viable options for decreasing the number of living creatures under our roof:

a) poison
b) traditional "snap-traps" or "sticky" traps
c) humane (read: catch and release) traps
d) denial

As option d wasn't actually a viable option, and I didn't see the point in murdering the little guy, we elected to go with option c. Again with the help of Google, two days later, we were the proud owners of the Abundant Earth Humane Live "No Kill" Smart Mouse Trap. Two of them!

The concept is pretty simple: the mouse (or Remy, as it were) goes in, but can't get out. You then drive (a recommended minimum of) five or so miles away and release the mouse into the wild (which may ultimately lead to the untimely death of said mouse to any potential lurking opportunist predators, but I digress). Problem solved!

Or not.

For the next six weeks, the traps sat empty. No Remy. I had deluded myself into thinking our mouse troubles would be over a mere minutes after setting the traps.

From the Abundant Earth website:

Actual customer testimonials

"The trap worked!! Yippee!! We caught two mice in three hours last night..."

Lena - Colorado

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"...We've just caught our third mouse with your traps - and we've only had them a week..."

Shelly - Virginia

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...Imagine our surprise when we ended up with not one but TWO mice in the trap at once. In all, we caught and released about five mice..."

Sharon - Washington

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After six weeks of precisely zero mouse appearances, I concluded that the mouse was either the figment of my husband and daughter's joint imaginations, or some silly ruse that they had concocted just to irritate me. If there ever had been a mouse, I was firmly convinced that he had moved on to greener pastures (or newer dishwashers). Remy began to fade from our thoughts.

Until last night.

After dinner, we decided to spend some time with the child watching a movie. As is our custom, we lit a fire, turned out all the lights and settled in for the night. An hour or so into the movie, my husband jumped up suddenly from his position on the couch, brushing frantically at his arms and legs. My husband is something of a man's man, so to see him flailing about like a little girl caused me to collapse into a fit of giggles. The child, looking alarmed, bolted up the stairs.

"That's it" he declared and moved toward the couch with a rarely seen look of determination in his eyes.

"What's up?" I snorted, still finding myself highly entertained by his spastic behavior. "What's your deal?"

He suddenly yanked the couch out from the wall.

"What are you doing!? Would you please get a grasp on reality and settle down? This is ridiculous." His shenanigans were rapidly losing their entertainment value.

"Not ridiculous. Something brushed my arm and I'm pretty sure it was the mouse".

"Oh, right. Honey, I hate to break it to you. It wasn't the damn mouse. In fact, there isn't a mouse. It was a spider, or... a moth. Something. Not a mouse. Mice don't do that. This is stupid."

"Mmmhmmm" he dismissed me as he rolled the couch onto its back to examine its underside.

"See? No holes, no shredding, nothing. No mouse."

"Yep". He was now pounding the bottom of the couch with the heel of his hand. He picked up a shoe and started hammering with it. As if that weren't enough, he was now hoisting the couch up onto one end, shaking and pounding on it furiously.

I had reached my limit of silliness for the night.

"ENOUGH! Can we please put the furniture back on the floor, knock off the ridiculous antics and get back to the..."

Something shot out from the bottom of the couch.

My mouth dropped open in disbelief.

It was the mouse.

We both stared as it scurried through the living room into the dining room, behind a large potted plant, then raced from the dining room into the kitchen where it vanished.

I stood there for what seemed like an eternity in utter disbelief, terrified to meet my husbands eyes, regardless of the inevitability. I slowly turned to him to find him grinning and nodding.

"That? Was a mouse." Smug bastard.

Within our marriage, we share a right-to-wrong-ratio of approximately 90% in my favor. This was a devastating blow.

"I...I don't know what to say. You were right. I'm sorry." Damn it.

So there you have it: we have a mouse. I felt that I owed it to my husband to get up early this morning to cook him his favorite breakfast.

And shop online for a new couch.