Mice Are Not Nice

By Kanela

I've lived in my childhood home off and on for the past 50 plus years and have encountered two mice. The first was years ago, as a little girl, with tender feelings for "All Creatures Great and Small." My Dad caught that little fellow in a paper bag and I made him promise to take Mickey outside and let him go. To this day, I don't know whether he kept that promise. After the morning I just had, I hope he didn't!

It all started at 5am in my usual rush to make a nutritious lunch for work. I yanked ("yanked" is a funny word) open the pantry cupboard door, looking for cookies, resulting in what I thought was a Jello box falling from a shelf on the door to my shoulder. However, last time I checked, Jello boxes do not have a head, legs, and tail. I discovered that I'm quite fluent in screaming. I screamed in English (being my native language), Spanish (being my high school language), French (being my want-to-learn language ), Ukrainian (being my ancestral scream), German (being guttural and properly harsh), and finally Australian (but who could understand that scream?) Perhaps that's why no one in the family came running to investigate the screaming ninny in the kitchen! After slamming the cupboard door on Mr. Mouse, I did the girlie thing of standing on a chair. I used this heightened awareness time to contemplate my next strategy. Would pepper spray leave lingering smells in the kitchen? Would pepper spray bring down a mouse? Would macing a mouse have lingering emotional effects on me? You may be wondering why I have pepper spray in my possession. But that's another story.

The clock was ticking and I was wishing the mouse would run up said clock and be struck Hickory Dickory into the next parallel universe. Unfortunately, I was the one who had to come down, leave a Danger Note for slumbering family members, and depart for work without my cookies.

Traumatized but functioning, I called home at a decent hour to get an up-date on the situation. Husband and Mother had both heard the screams but Husband thought I was sneezing and Mother was groggy so both just went back to sleep. Is that concern or what?

Perhaps Dad is smiling down at me, letting me know that he kept his promise and I've only seen one mouse in this house.

Leave an E Note for Sandra Seeley, Humor Writer, Author, Columnist, and Speaker