R.O.U.S.
“Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.” -Westley, The Princess Bride
In September 2022, I married my Westley, even walking down the aisle to “Storybook Love.” Our wedding was three days after we bought a house, a lovely little place by the Tennessee River. Both first-time homeowners, we looked on the purchase with a mix of glee and trepidation. Based on experiences in my childhood home, I’d developed a list of three terrors of home ownership. One: the house fire. No problem, don’t leave flames unattended and you can avoid that. Two: tornadoes (but I’ve been clever enough to discover what those look like). As for the third…
In February, I started hearing noises in the walls. Horrible, awful scratching noises. I told my dear husband, “We’ve got mice.” He did not believe me. Two days later, we were watching TV and saw a tiny little mouse go skittering across the kitchen floor. He dutifully agreed that yes, we have mice. We called our pest control company the next day.
Our pest control company is a wonderful local business, and we’ve been so grateful to have their help dealing with all the pests that come with living in a hundred-year-old house near a river. Unfortunately, like most places, they’re short-staffed right now. They added us to the schedule and said they’d be out as soon as possible. In the meantime, we set about eliminating their food sources and finding the hole in the cabinets the mice were using to access the kitchen. I saw one once, using this hole, when it was making a racket and keeping me from sleeping. It was no longer a baby, but a small adult mouse.
It took a full month, a month where the mice crawling around inside our walls almost drove me crazy. And no wonder–it was around then that we discovered they were eating their way through our huge bowl of leftover Halloween candy. So, the mice were running around inside my walls on a sugar high. We trashed the candy, and the pest control fellow finally made it out and booby-trapped our whole house against the tiny invaders.
“And you’re sure it’s a mouse?” the guy asked me.
“I know what mice and mice droppings look like. And I just saw it last week. It’s a mouse.”
“Okay. It might take a week for them to get curious enough to investigate the traps, but they’re designed to lure them. If you haven’t caught it in a week, let us know.”
I thanked him profusely, and off he went. Precisely twelve hours later, I was soundly in bed when I heard a loud snap.
And then I heard the banging.
Oh, crap, I thought. The humane one-hit-KO snap trap didn’t kill it.
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I opened the door a crack to investigate and saw the World’s. Largest. Mouse. banging angrily around on the kitchen floor with its head inside the mouse trap. I’ve seen rats smaller than this thing, heck, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen cats smaller than this mouse. It had fat rolls protecting its spine from the snap trap.
I was now very awake, and more than a little alarmed.
“Chris!” I shouted, across the house. My husband, who was up late playing video games, did not hear me.
“Chris!”
No response, just the faint sounds of him chatting with his buddies online.
“CHRISTOPHER!”
Oh, he definitely wouldn’t hear me, and I didn’t want to go through the kitchen to get him and risk running afoul of the irate rodent.
I grabbed my phone, messaged him on Discord, and told him to get his butt in the kitchen. He came running mere seconds later…and slid to a stop when he saw the mouse.
I’m telling ya, this mouse was huge. It had been gorging itself on our leftover Halloween candy for a month, and by now it was the size of a small house cat. HUGE.
My dear, sweet husband unleashed a string of cuss words that would make a sailor blush, grabbed a broom, and swept the mouse into a dust pan. He took it outside, and after I had the pleasure of listening to some more banging and cussing from outside our kitchen window, he returned, triumphant. I breathed a sigh of relief.
So, we know the secrets of the Fire Swamp (er, the River?) now.
I think we can live here happily for quite some time.