The fur will fly on Friday the 13th

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/10/2017 (3204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I am back — and, unfortunately, so are they.

What I’m trying to say is I recently returned from two weeks visiting family on the West Coast and when I got home I discovered we had at least one unwelcome visitor.

There I was, stretched out on the good couch in the den, mindlessly watching something on our big-screen TV, when, suddenly and without warning, I spotted what looked like a little furry shadow perched on top of the rundown couch on the other side of the room.

“Huh?” I grunted, which is when the little furry shadow scurried across the couch before vanishing under the ratty cushions.

For all you stylish people who live in fabulous rodent-free homes, I am talking about a (very bad word) mouse.

Regular readers, assuming they are taking their prescription medication, will know this is far from the first time I have written an entertaining and educational column about the unfettered joy of having a mouse in the house.

In fact, back when I had just started writing for this newspaper, mice were such frequent guests in our home that I held a contest wherein I invited readers to send in their best mouse tales in exchange for a chance at winning a free visit from a local exterminator.

Back then, I seem to recall being vaguely amused at how terrified my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, and my daughter, She Who Believes Her Father Is An Idiot, were at the prospect of living under the same roof as these diminutive cheese-eating home invaders.

There is a clear division of duties in our house, under which my wife is responsible for bee- and spider-related emergencies, whereas I am expected to handle any crisis involving electronic appliances, telemarketers and/or mice.

It has been a few years since I have been required to don the mantle of Mr. Mouse Hunter Man, because years ago we called in professional pest-control experts to wreak havoc on the furry invaders, who apparently gather each fall in the park beside our house to discuss where they want to spend the winter.

After spotting the mouse blatantly taking cover in the tattered couch in the den, I had no choice but to spring into action.

I did this via the technique of carrying each of our dogs, one by one, into the den to see whether they would bravely dive under the couch and root out the random rodent.

Instead of being filled with a vicious lust for blood, the dogs basically sat on the carpet in the den and stared up at me with their moony little faces.

That’s when I came up with a plan so obvious I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me before — I would wait for my wife to get home and ask her what to do.

What we did was pull all of the furniture in the den away from the walls, then inspect the carpet for mouse tracks. This tactic helped us discover a cache of old candy wrappers, a missing slipper and a half-full bottle of lotion for dry skin, which I’m sure the mouse enjoyed.

But the elusive beast had made good his escape, and didn’t show himself again until the next day, when I spotted him darting out from under a table in the kitchen and brazenly racing under the stove.

“You have to do something!” my wife squealed, a look of terror in her eyes. “Mice are YOUR responsibility!”

With no concern for my own safety, I took two steps to protect our home, namely:

1) Routinely carrying a large broom whenever I walked from the kitchen to the den; and 2) calling a local pest-control firm and begging them to come to our home immediately, possibly armed with shotguns.

Despite being in a state of high alert for the past few days, there was no further sign of mice until the other night as my wife and I reclined on the two couches in the den attempting to watch an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, wherein a Klingon apparently transforms into a terrifying beast that can rip apart a spaceship with its claws.

This is when my wife screamed an extremely high-pitched scream.

“Relax, honey,” I said, “It’s just a TV show.”

“NO!” my wife shrieked in reply. “IT’S A MOUSE. IT JUST POKED ITS HEAD OUT FROM UNDER YOUR COUCH!”

After hopping off our respective couches, I grabbed the business end of my broom and stood guard as my wife carefully set another half dozen snap traps in the den, which we then sealed tightly by locking the room and stuffing an old rolled-up carpet under the door to keep the creature in.

Fortunately, the pest-control people called in the morning and promised to be at our home this Friday, which just happens to be the 13th, which hopefully will be unlucky for domesticus rodenticus.

It turns out they (the pest control people, I mean) are super busy dealing with calls about bed bugs and wasps and, yes, mice.

“This is rather urgent because I currently have a mouse trapped in my den,” I told the woman in the pest-control office.

Do you know what the professional pest-control woman said when I told her about the mouse in the den? She said, and I will quote her directly: “Eeeewww!”

So I am feeling confident the problem will soon be under control. It had better be, because the mouse is not the only thing currently locked in the den.

It breaks my heart to say this, but our big-screen TV is trapped in there, too.

And I’m not sure how much longer I can last without knowing what happened to that Klingon.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca