Vacation turned into a couch-tastrophe

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This article was published 28/08/2019 (2600 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s not the kind of phone call you want to get when you’re away on vacation.

There we were, my wife and I, strolling through Yaletown in downtown Vancouver last week, searching for a place that reportedly sells the finest tacos in the city, when, suddenly and without warning, my cellphone started to ring.

(For the record, I am talking about my new cellphone and it doesn’t so much “ring” as make some weird kind of blaring trumpet noise, because that’s the way my wife set it up and I haven’t figured out how to change it.)

The call came from my son, who wanted to share some news that would pull the rug out from under my manly feet, metaphorically speaking.

“I just wanted you to know that I threw out the couch,” is what he told me in a matter-of-fact manner that left me reeling.

I stopped walking and made the frowniest face I know how to make. “What couch are you talking about?” I demanded.

“YOUR couch!” my son said with obvious glee. “It was disgusting! I dragged it out of the den and left it in the alley beside the garbage. The city is going to pick it up in a few days and take it to the dump. Enjoy the rest of your holiday.”

Which is when my son, a man of few words, cheerfully hung up. Fighting off manly tears, I turned to She Who Must Not Be Named and explained what her son had done while we were vacationing on the West Coast.

You are going to be shocked, but here’s what she happily exclaimed: “Yay! I hated that couch. It was sooooo gross!”

I, on the other hand, was crestfallen. In an instant, I had gone from a contented, middle-aged couch potato to a bitter, middle-aged couch potato without a (insert bad word here) couch. I’m pretty sure that, if you do not have a couch to call your own, they kick you out of the Couch Potato Society.

We have — sorry, make that had — two couches in our den. There’s the newer couch, which was expensive and stylish and is the only one that my wife will use; and there was my couch, an antiquated hide-a-bed on which I have parked my pasty body for too many years to count, the ratty sofa from which I have viewed more sporting events and bad movies than you could shake a frozen TV dinner at.

This couch has always been a divisive force in my house. From my wife’s perspective, it was a lot like me — older than dirt, in a tragic state of disrepair and liberally coated with dog hair, condiment stains and that powdered cheese-like dust you find at the bottom of a bag of Cheetos.

If you drew up a list of people who refused to sit on my couch, it would look like this: 1) My wife 2) My kids 3) All of my friends and any random visitors who happened to drop by the house.

On the other hand, the list of those who loved this couch was marginally shorter, namely: 1) Me 2) The legion of mice that have, from time to time, decided to spend the winter in our home.

Sure, my couch had seen better times, but it was always there for me, always leaning its lumpy frame up against the wall in the den, waiting to conform to the matching lumps in my body at a moment’s notice. We had a lot in common in the sense that we both spent most of time lying motionless in the den.

We had been through a lot together, me and my couch. It wasn’t stylish, it wasn’t comfortable, but it was my safe place, a non-judgmental space where I could spill a tub of onion dip and no one would be the wiser because the resulting stain would simply blend in with all the other stains accumulated over the years.

I can still recall the day a few years back, during the height of our mouse invasion, when I was lying in the den and — this was also suddenly and without warning — I noticed the slightest hint of movement in the middle of my beloved couch.

Which is when, right before my eyes, a mouse popped up from between the couch pillows, scanned the den and, after catching a glimpse of the stunned expression on my face, dove back under the pillows and vanished.

The war was on — I decided then and there that I would not surrender this decaying piece of furniture to some unwanted home invader who wanted to treat it like some kind of cut-rate hotel for wayward rodents.

Which is why I drove to the local hardware store, stocked up on anti-mouse devices, then returned home and covered literally every inch of my couch with snap traps and sticky traps. On the TV table beside the couch, I left half a muffin as bait, surrounding it with even more potentially lethal traps.

Then I shut the door to the den and sealed up the crack under the door with a towel to ensure the unwelcome rodent couldn’t escape the gruesome fate to which I was confident it would succumb.

In the morning, when I marched back into the den, expecting to see the fallen body of my furry foe, I instead discovered that, other than a few crumbs, the muffin had been consumed and the network of couch traps was undisturbed. This mouse was like one of those cat burglars you see in the movies, the ones who contort their bodies like gymnasts, thereby evading an array of laser beams to snatch a priceless gem.

Tragically, the city’s garbage crews have already come and dragged my old pal away to its final resting place, leaving me with nothing but fond memories and an empty sofa-shaped space along the wall in the den.

My wife couldn’t be happier, but along with the empty spot in our den, there’s a huge hole in my heart. I haven’t seen them in a while, but I suspect the mice are going to be heartbroken as well.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca