Of mice and men

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2018 (2800 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I imagine most of you are jealous of the thrill-a-minute life I lead as a crusading newspaper columnist with steely blue eyes and naturally curly hair.

Well, you should be. Take the other day, for instance. Before I could get down to work writing a fact-free column about my desire to go to the moon because the zero-gravity environment would help me hit a golf ball farther, I had to visit the eye doctor.

The eye doctor likes to see me on a regular basis to ensure that I can still see well enough to pull my Visa card out of my wallet. I am, of course, kidding. He doesn’t take Visa.

The first thing that happened was one of the clinic technicians parked me in a chair and then used a state-of-the-art device to blast puffs of air into my eyeballs to ensure I found this annoying.

Then, after flipping through old magazines, I had to go into a small room for another test, which involved me staring into some kind of a high-tech tunnel and clicking a clicker whenever I spotted a flash of light anywhere in my field of vision.

Before this, however, the technician put special drops in my eyes to make my pupils swell up to the size of manhole covers, which ensured that every bit of light in the known universe was sucked directly into my eyeballs.

So the nice technician was preparing to put the drops in when she suddenly scrunched up her face in a medically significant manner and, without explanation, chirped: “Hmm, I’m going to give you a tissue.”

“Is it to wipe my eyes?” I wondered.

“Um, no,” she replied, nervously handing me a Kleenex.

Which is when I had a flash of insight, which is not something that happens to me a great deal. “I’m guessing there is a gigantic booger dangling from my nose, right?” I sighed, looking into her sympathetic face.

She smiled and didn’t say a thing, so I just blew my nose and we got on with the test. This was followed by an examination with the eye doctor, who was wearing what appeared to be a cross between a Welsh mining helmet and a virtual reality headset that directed beams of blinding light into my now-pizza-sized pupils.

When it was over, given the wonky state of my swollen eyeballs, I decided to drive home and write the column about the benefits of playing a round (I’m talking about golf) on the lunar surface.

So there we were, me and my hugely dilated pupils, sitting at the home computer, trying to form professionally amusing thoughts when, suddenly and without warning, my overly sensitive vision detected some manner of movement on the floor beside me, just behind the curtains.

Which is when, with no regard for personal safety, I pulled aside the drapes and there, lurking in a furtive manner, was Justin Trudeau. OK, again I am kidding in a jocular manner. It was, in fact, a mouse, which immediately sprinted away in the direction of the liquor cabinet.

Having had a great deal of experience with unwanted rodent house guests, I knew exactly what to do — I shrieked like a Grade 1 student who has just dropped their science fair project (most likely a volcano) on the floor.

After a moment’s hesitation, I darted into the kitchen, grabbed a broom and the chase was on. If you had been there, what you would have seen was a crazed, overweight columnist with incredibly large pupils, screaming like a banshee, running around and swinging a broom with reckless abandon while a rogue rodent sought cover behind various bits of furniture.

Our dogs, who had been sleeping nearby and were oblivious to the fact that I was hot on the furry heels of a mouse, thought this was the best game ever invented. While I scampered about, swatting wildly in hopes of flushing out the cheese-eating invader, the dogs leaped into the air and barked at the decibel-level of a nuclear blast to convey the notion that we could not have been having more fun if we were chasing cars or scaring the postman.

I am ashamed to admit this, but the mouse made good his escape. As I sat in a comfy chair in the living room, I’m pretty sure I could hear him laughing at me from behind the drapes. So the dogs and I pretty much just sat there, sweating profusely as we waited for my wife, who was working late, to return home and help us cope with the crisis.

When she finally walked in the door, casting a baleful eye at the dogs and myself, she sprang into action — stuffing all of our bread and cookies into mouse-proof plastic containers.

“Did you set any snap traps?” my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, demanded.

“You know I can’t set those things,” I grunted in reply, because it is a well-known fact that whenever I try to set a snap trap, it simply explodes and ends up dangling in a painful manner from my nose or one of my fingers.

Which is when my wife shrugged, grabbed a bag of traps from our supply in the closet and proceeded to place them in various locations, including a floor-level cupboard in the kitchen.

Then she walked away down the hall, which is when I heard a loud “SNAP!!!” emanating from the kitchen cupboard, and when I flung it open, there was the mouse — now an ex-mouse — mangled by the trap my wife had set just moments before.

“You see, that’s how good I am,” my wife sniffed, taking pride in the fact she had exterminated the elusive invader within minutes of walking in the door.

What with being a modern husband, I was tempted to explain that I’d obviously tired the mouse out before she got home, but I didn’t want to ruin her moment.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca