I’m blaming the mouse on the spouse

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/04/2018 (3019 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I always assumed it was my fault.

Like an idiot, I figured our house was constantly under siege from mice because, as a slovenly homeowner who rarely leaves the safety of the couch in his den, I had left one too many delicious cupcakes undefended on our kitchen counter.

It turns out I could not have been more wrong.

It now appears the real villain is my beloved spouse, She Who Must Not be Named.

I am now convinced that my wife gives off some manner of invisible rays or vibrations or scents that mice find irresistible.

In other words, my longtime spouse is a (bad word) mouse magnet.

The evidence is hard to dispute. At our house, we have not seen a mouse in well over a month, not since I was perched in an extremely vulnerable position in our main bathroom and — “EEEEK!!” — a pudgy mouse waddled out from behind the toilet before disappearing into an open cupboard.

In contrast, let’s examine what happened earlier this week at the high school where my wife works.

(With that taste of foreshadowing, I’m guessing most of you regular readers know where today’s column is heading.)

So there was my wife, sitting at her desk in the main office near the end of the day, innocently doing whatever it is she does when, suddenly and without warning, she spotted… something… a flash of grey… on the left side of her desktop.

Naturally, being a modern education professional, she remained calm and collected. I am, of course, kidding. What my wife did was bolt to her feet in abject terror and squeal something like this: “WAH! THERE’S A MOUSE ON MY DESK!”

As my wife scuttled away, her plucky office colleagues moved in to scour the top of her desk, checking behind her pencil holder and potted plant, but the search was in vain.

About 20 minutes later, my jittery wife was back at her desk when, once again, she spotted another tiny flash of grey, this time on the floor about two feet away from her own two feet.

“WAH!!” my wife bravely shrieked, hopping up and down.

“IT’S A MOUSE! I DEFINITELY SAW A MOUSE!”

Again her colleagues raced to the rescue, searching high and low for any sign of a rogue rodent on or near my wife’s desk. Just as they were about to admit defeat, one of the searchers pulled open the bottom file drawer on the desk and there HE was… Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posing for a selfie!

Ha ha ha! Again, I kid.

It was, in fact, a mouse, which caused my spouse to emit further high-pitched yelps of terror, before demanding that the school’s custodians be called in to dispose of this invader via any means necessary, up to and including nuclear weapons.

Which is exactly what the custodians did, in the sense they set up roughly 20 traps on and around my wife’s apparently rodent-infested desk.

Now, before animal-rights activists send me angry letters on their “I (heart) fuzzy creatures” stationery, allow me to acknowledge several facts, including: (1) mice are people too; (2) mice are entitled to a quality education, just like teenagers, who apparently are also human despite evidence to the contrary; and (3) Born Free was a wonderful movie and it would be nice if we could release mice back into the wild with little backpacks full of cheese.

During all this excitement, I was at home floating in the tub, but being kept up to date via constant mouse-related smartphone texts from my terrified wife, who arrived home a short time later shouting “GROSS! GROSS!” and demanding a stiff belt of single-malt Scotch.

As she sipped her Scotch, my wife received a text from a colleague who works later hours, informing her that (HURRAY! Or BOO! depending on your point of view) the mouse had been caught in one of the traps.

“I don’t know why it picked my desk,” is what my wife told me. “I have an extremely clean desk.”

I am sure this is true, but the fact is my wife returned to work the next morning and asked the custodians to give her desk the once-over before she sat down.

They just laughed and reminded her they had already caught the mouse, so the coast was clear.

As you have already deduced, before sitting down, my wife gave her desk the kind of examination I typically get when I visit the doctor for my annual physical and there, behind her computer, stuck in a trap on her desktop was… yet another mouse.

“WAH! WAH! WAH!” shrieked my wife, who by this time knew the routine, sprinting out of the office to fetch the custodians, who removed the rodential remains, thereby allowing my wife, armed with rubber gloves and disinfectant wipes, to spend the next couple of hours scouring her desk until she could see her face in the shine.

This was when peace returned to the school and everyone was happy.

At least they were until that afternoon when one of my wife’s colleagues tapped her on the shoulder, asked her to join her in another office, then calmly explained that (hold on while I activate the caps lock feature on my keyboard) THERE WAS YET ANOTHER MOUSE ON A TRAP UNDER MY WIFE’S DESK EEEEEEEEK!!!

Again, I was kept abreast of this breaking news via jittery texts from my wife that were festooned with cute emojis of mouse faces and chunks of cheese.

So there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that now, whenever a teacher or office worker wanders past my wife’s desk, they try to terrify her via the technique of making realistic squeaking noises.

The good news is that my home appears to be mouse-free… because for the time being I’m making my wife sleep in the garage. You can barely hear the screams.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca