The mouse is dead; long live the mouse

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2017 (3174 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the past decade as an overweight, middle-aged newspaper columnist, I have come to recognize the sorts of stories that editors enjoy.

From my experience, hardcore editors are especially fond of stories about things that burst into flames, and high-speed chases that end with bullets flying around in a manner that shatters a neighbourhood’s sense of calm.

What they are not fond of — and I am going to be brutally blunt — is stories about mice.

“OHMYGAWD!” is what an editor will typically snort when I file another in a series of educational and entertaining mouse-related yarns. “Not another mouse column! What the (unprintable word) is wrong with that guy?”

In my defence, I have also discovered that there are few things readers enjoy more than a column riddled with rodents.

Seriously, of all the columns I have written in the last 10 years or so, few generate the same sort of intense reader response as the ones wherein I describe my ongoing war with an army of mice that seems to be inexorably drawn to my home, year after (bad word) year.

I am typically deluged with emails from sympathetic readers who want to share their own mouse horror stories, along with tips on how to emerge victorious when locked in battle with cheese-eating home invaders.

Countless readers have generously explained I am wasting my time baiting snaptraps with peanut butter when mice apparently are more attracted to everything from raisins to crunchy dog food.

Or as a kind reader named Karen explained: “We tried baiting traps with peanut butter, we tried cheese — nothing worked. Until we discovered that our mice preferred Cheezies, Hawkins brand to be precise. LOL! After that, we loaded every trap with a Hawkins Cheezie and they just couldn’t resist.”

If I had only known earlier, Karen. Sadly, we handed out dozens of little packets of Hawkins Cheezies on Halloween, leaving nothing left over with which to lure mice to their doom.

Email aside, whenever I am foolish enough to leave my house to stand in line at the liquor store or supermarket checkout, some complete stranger will typically sidle up to me, place a hand on my shoulder, and stare at me with a moony expression.

“Well?” is what a mystery woman said last week when she button-holed me outside a local mall.

I smiled a confused smile. “Well, what?” I replied, because I get paid to ask the tough questions.

The woman smiled a knowing smile. “Did you catch him yet?” she said, a look of great understanding in her eyes.

“You mean the mouse?” I squeaked in reply.

My gentle interrogator rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she chirped. “The mouse, did you catch him?”

That is when I explained no, the (very bad word) mouse had continued to evade everything we had thrown at him, including snaptraps, glue boards, kitchen brooms and a professional exterminator.

Then she launched into her own lengthy and spell-binding story of pursuing a wily rodent that possessed an evil brain coupled with the reflexes of a Russian gymnast.

I personally had come to believe that we would be tormented forever by the Einstein of mice, until things came to a dramatic head last week, on the very day I carved a jack-o-lantern entitled “Doug’s Mouse House” for a charity event at a local mall.

There I was, sitting at the home computer, writing about how my pumpkin had been inspired by the world’s most elusive house mouse when, suddenly and without warning, my wife, who happened to be standing in the kitchen, squealed with excitement.

“I heard a big SNAP in the cupboard under the sink!” She Who Must Not Be Named yelled.

When I strode into the kitchen, armed with a straw broom, I flung open the cupboard and, to my surprise, there was our furry little tormentor, dead as the proverbial doornail in a trap that had been hidden there for months.

“Ding, Dong, the mouse is dead!” my wife sang with obvious glee.

I personally felt an unexpected twinge of sadness over the demise of a foe that, like Captain Hook, I had come to think of as “My Great and Worthy Opponent.”

Still, for several days, my wife and I were walking a little taller, feeling a little prouder, and sleeping a little more easily, knowing that our home and baked goods were, at long last, free from the covetous glances and drooling teeth of uninvited and elusive pests.

So, yes, we were cocky. We were smug. We thought we’d had the last laugh. At least we did until, in each of the last four or five days, we have dragged ourselves out of bed and trundled into our den, where, on the ratty couch where I normally watch TV, we have discovered the unmistakable calling card of a rogue house mouse — tiny little droppings.

So far, we have seen neither hide nor hair of our new invader. But every morning in the den, which is trapped up to the hilt, we have found his offerings on the couch.

It’s driving my wife and me crazy. I suspect my editors feel the same way.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca