I inherited my love of mice from my mother. When you live in a hundred year old house, you have to expect to share it with these downy little guys who come in from the cold in the fall. We coexisted quite well. They never fazed my mother, not even when she woke up one night to find one standing up on her chest chittering away in the dark at her, as if he had some complaint about his own accommodations. She threw him off the blanket and went back to sleep.
If she wasn’t afraid of them, why would I be?
Once when my step-father was showering, she opened the shower curtain and said, “Guess what I have in here?” She was holding an empty toilet paper roll between her palms. I don’t know why she did this. She had to have anticipated the outcome. When he couldn’t begin to guess, she said, “A mouse.” He said, “You’re lying.” He doubted my mother? Bad idea. She removed one hand so he could see inside. The mouse made his getaway by jumping on a naked man and landing soaking wet in the tub. There ensued another pursuit of this little guy who was later dried off and put outside.
Years ago, I was invited for dinner at her new house which was a ranch…lots of space for running amok. I was thrilled to see she had a mouse in a cardboard box in the kitchen. She had a screen over the box and planned to put the mouse outside when the cat was not around. It was just the two of us that night. I got the mouse out of the box and sat down at the kitchen table, playing with the mouse and talking to my mother as she cooked. She finally looked at me and said sternly, “Don’t you dare let that mouse loose.” I told her, “I won’t. I’m holding him. He’s fine.” Well, he was quite fine because less than a minute later, after he had lulled me into thinking he really like being held by a giant, he took a flying leap onto the floor…which my mother noticed immediately and started yelling at me. She turned off the stove and we chased him for ten minutes through several rooms before he wound up in her guest room. We closed the door and thought we had him. My mother had a queen-sized bed in there. If any mouse had run under my queen-sized bed, he would have been lost forever in a maze of books, shoes, gift wrap, plastic containers, empty gift boxes and other necessary paraphernalia a person might need close at hand. Under my mother’s guest bed, there was nothing. Nothing but a very irritated mouse who stood up in the middle and loudly vocalized his displeasure. She and I were on opposite sides of the bed, and try as we might, neither of us could quite reach him. My mother had finally stopped yelling at me, and we lay on the floor and laughed.
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My daughter has her own mouse story, involving me, of course. She was visiting overnight. I was downstairs making breakfast the next morning when she appeared, held out her hand and said, “Mother, would you like to explain this, please?” I saw nothing but a tissue. She said, “I was looking for something in the medicine cabinet and found this.” Then I remembered. She was continuing to frown at me, saying, “For the love of God, mother, is there something wrong with you?”
I told her, “I can explain.” And, this is what happened. Several nights before, in the middle of the night when I was sound asleep, my cat, Annie, brought me a mouse present. I was able to retrieve him, this one already lifeless, but I was exhausted and in my nightgown. My options were to take the dead mouse downstairs to the cold garage and put him in the trash, or hide him somewhere so Annie couldn’t get him. If he wasn’t securely contained, she would have gotten to him and started chewing, an idea I did not find appealing at 3:00 am. I didn’t want to put him inside a drawer, and finally opted to put him inside a tissue and lay him inside the medicine cabinet. It was the safest choice. I crawled back into bed, fully intending to discard him in the morning, but I totally forgot the mouse. Ergo, Jess was searching the medicine cabinet and found a dead and dried-up mouse in a tissue. I don’t know why she was so surprised…
gettysburggirl 