I hates meeses to pieces

I learned a couple of things about mice this week.

1. They eat everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Including candle wax. Soap. Rubber spatulas.

2. They are the cause of more household disputes than infidelity, finances and the correct way to fold a fitted sheet COMBINED.

So a few days ago I found evidence of a mouse in the house. This information by itself is no great shakes. Every winter we evict from one to four critters via our humane trap baited with peanut butter (if I were a mouse I'd be sniffing around that, too) but this winter it's been especially annoying. We’re spotty housekeepers on a good day, and lately, we've been a little more, shall we say, casual about cleaning. Things tend to stay where they fall, most of the dishes land in the sink, and I'm not quite sure where we keep the vacuum any more. But even with our usual disarray, a bunch of mouse poop on the kitchen counter is difficult to miss. I cleaned what I could see, alerted my spouse, who set the trap. The next morning, nothing. Then I went into mouse-mania-mode and started cleaning what I couldn't see. Underneath the waffle-maker. The toaster. The Foreman grill. The blender. Then looked behind the "speed rack" we keep next to the fridge, containing Pepsi and seltzer bottles, the three bottles of Martinelli's sparkling cider that we keep forgetting to bring to people's houses for New Year's, and my various vials of medication and vitamins. And there I found a Dr. Roger Murphree Fibromyalgia formula mega-multi-vitamin pill - I did say that things tend to fall where they land - nibbled around the edges. This was bad. Not only did we have a smart mouse, but we had Mighty Mouse (for those of you under thirty-five, he is a cartoon mouse who is the rodential equivalent of Arnold Schwarznegger.)

Another night of peanut butter, another empty trap.

As I was doing more cleaning, I realized it’s been a while since I’ve seen certain credit cards (Oh, no, did the mouse take them out on the town? Was he having a fling on my Target card?) and then I remembered that they were in a small fanny-pack-type pocketbook I keep on the kitchen table. It contains emergency items when I only want to grab something small and go – credit cards, Burt’s Bees lipgloss and snacks. Keep in mind that since I've been liberated from my job I've been using our kitchen table as a kind of headquarters - the computer chair from my office wheeled up to my Levenger slanted editing desk (these are great things, worth the investment.) Scattered all around the pocketbook and in and among my books, unopened mail, New York Times crossword puzzles, candles, and loose paperwork were soy nut crumbs and more mouse poop. The bag of snacks in my pocketbook had been chewed open.

I almost leapt up onto a chair like a 50s housewife and screamed.

“Look at this!!” I said to my husband, as I pointed and shuddered. “My God! It was on the table!!” Then I started getting mad. The little bastard had been in my pocketbook. Now it was personal. Nobody goes into my pocketbook.

What happened next was a mystery. Maybe you guys could help me understand this. Did I use some extraterrestrial language in between my words? Did I push into my tone something accusatory? Did he mistake my anger at the mouse for anger at him? But for a moment he was silent. A horrible silence as his eyes blazed and that vein throbbed in his forehead.

“So it’s MY fault? You want ME to fix it? What, I didn’t catch the mouse fast enough?”

I just blinked at him. “But I didn’t ask…I’m not…”

“You know, I’m tired of this! I can’t do everything around here!”

And that really made me mad. We stomped off in opposite directions. I believe I yelled a few things in an extraterrestrial language over my shoulder.

And after I cooled off for a while, I cleaned the rest of the table. I dumped out the contents of my pocketbook and scrubbed them clean. I wiped up the excrement and soy nut husks. I threw away the scented candles. While I was upstairs fuming, my husband had put a trap at the edge of the table. I set a second one for good measure.

He’s still out there somewhere. But if anything ever comes between a husband and wife, damned sure it shouldn’t be a mouse. Not even Mighty Mouse.