OF MICE AND MEN

            I don’t like mice. Why anyone would even want to have one as a pet is beyond my understanding. Our son, Jon, had some white mice once. I’m sure I didn’t give him permission, but there they were in a cage in his bedroom. That was all fine and good until the day they got out. Fine and good no longer mattered, they were now rodents in my house and I had the right to kill them. I can’t remember if we set traps or if he finally found them and transported them somewhere else but they disappeared.

            I remember when my Dad had a mouse run up his pant leg while he was out working in the shop repairing some farm equipment. It didn’t take long for Dad to discard his pants, all the while dancing and hollering.

            One summer day when we were living at the ranch in Dehlin, my two oldest sons, then about the ages of four and five, were in the shed helping their Grandpa Schwieder. You can imagine how much help two that age would be. Well they came to the house and into the kitchen with their hands held cup like. “Look what we found Mom. Grandpa said to bring them in to show you.” In their hands were tiny, pink baby mice. They didn’t even have their eyes open. Now I really believe the boy’s grandfather was grinning out in the shed, just waiting to hear a scream from me and maybe even see me run from the house. Instead, I calmly looked at those two innocent boy’s cupped hands, being careful not to get too close, told them what cute baby mice they had, and said, “Now take them back out to Grandpa.” Grandpa never said a thing to me about that incident, but I think I disappointed him.

            We have had problems with mice in our house at the ranch all of the time, but traps would usually control them. I used to be really naïve, believing anything Boyd told me. “Don’t worry,” he said one night as we were in bed and could here mice running around, “they can’t climb up on the bed.” When one ran across my pillow, over my face and onto the window sill, I knew I had been deceived! Boyd calmly moved over to the window, which was on my side of the bed, closed the window, trapping the mouse between the window and screen, and figured he had the problem solved. He slept well that night, I didn’t. Next morning he opened the window, caught the mouse and escorted it outside. And I no longer believe everything he says.

            Another time, again at the ranch, we had been to the valley and when we got back we found the screen door hadn’t been shut tight. We had a lot of mice running through the house that evening. We handled this one differently: I laid on the couch on my stomach, while Boyd was on the floor with a BB gun and a flash light. When I saw a mouse run I pointed it out to Boyd and he would shine the flashlight in it’s eyes and shoot. He shot quite a few mice that night.

            We still get mice in the house at the ranch but with traps and DeCon, we seem to be able to control them. They like to move into the house in the late fall and stay all winter, besides running through during the summer.  We have had mice in our valley home, but not as often. And we have a cat that is a good mouser. Our dogs like to chase and catch mice also, so the mice have to be extra brave before they venture into the house. And then they have to face me, that person who hates mice.