Death to David Schwimmer*

At our house we have a rule about bugs.  If the bugs are outside, we are in their home and so we leave them alone.  But if they come into our house, we kill them.  (Sloan would also like to apply this rule to our neighbors roaming cats, but that’s for another post.)  Well, we also apply this rule to other pests.

About six months ago, we had an unwelcome visitor in our pantry.  I saw him scurry from the base of the refrigerator back into our pantry and I just about jumped up my own fanny.  

Yes.  Of course.  I screamed like a little girl.  

Then I did what any other sane person would do.  Jumped up on the couch, hopped from foot to foot shouting, “Oh my gosh!  Oh my gosh!  Mouse! Mouse!  Sloan!  Kill it!  Get it!  Mouse!  I just saw a mouse!”  

And Sloan handled it.  I will not go into the details, but let me just say it involved some sticky traps, a shoe box, and us throwing away what was once a perfectly good broom and dust pan.  I requested that we also gut the kitchen and remodel.  Having done this just six months prior, Sloan stopped his heroics at tossing the offending mouse (whom I named Jerry) in the trashcan.  And since we’d been warned that these rodents usually came in pairs, we baited and tossed again.  (Jerry’s “friend” I named Remy.  And to answer your next question, no.  I don’t think they were a couple.  Just roommates.  Rodent Bert and Ernies if you will.  Because if they were a couple and we killed them, then that’s a hate crime.  And while I’m cool with killing rodents, I’m not cool with hate crimes.) We then patched the Jerry-sized hole in the wall.  And doused our pantry in Lysol.

Well…

A couple of days ago I spotted a few, um, tirdlets.  If you’ve never seen mouse poo, imagine if you broke off some of your mechanical pencil lead.  (Did I just date myself?)  It’s super tiny.  Smaller than grains of rice.  I simply thought that maybe I had missed some in the great rodentcide of 2011. So I swept it up, scanned the baseboards of the pantry for holes, and affixed some Clorox wipes to the end of my new broom to clean it up.  Having seen no new holes, I called it a day.

Then, on Tuesday, I saw it.  Scurrying to the fridge.  And worst of all, Sloan was out of town.  And not just out of town, but in freaking Seattle.  So while I’m freaking out about the mouse I had now come to call David Schwimmer (because he played the voice of Remy’s brother in Ratatouille**), Sloan could not help me at all.  He texted me to put out a trap.  But that was a problem too.  What the heck was I supposed to do with David Schwimmer in the morning?  Did he expect me to put him in the shoe box and then in the trash can? I can not bear to even look at David Schwimmer, much less carry him out to the trash can.

I texted him back—Umm, I’m a girl.  That is below my paygrade.

(And feminists be damned, rodent disposal is one of the reason we ladies get married.  OK, maybe that’s not the main reason.  But it is up there with getting rid of bad middle names and fetching the mail in the rain.  If you don’t believe me, go read about LawMomma’s hero of a brother.  As I've delt with David Schwimmer all week, I've prayed for Law Momma who has just gone through a divorce and her son J is about a decade shy of being able to kill David Schwimmer.)  

So, again, I did what any sane person would do.  Nothing.  Actually, nothing + googling the question “can a mouse climb stairs?” Do not google this.  Particularly if you are on your Ipad and already in bed.  There will be many pages to answer this question.  Some with pictures.  If you do this and you also happen to be sleeping alone, it will take approximately 4 Benedryl and  half of a Valium to go to sleep.

I also read that mice have horrible eyesight but great hearing.  So I began, a la Parent Trap, to stomp around and beat spatulas together at night (the theory being they come out at night when houses quiet down).  I blasted Pandora.  In the morning, to fetch the cereal, I’d knock on the pantry doors and yell, “Hey, David Schwimmer.  There are no friends here!”  Henry thought this was hilarious and asked why.  I answered honestly, “Because your mother may be crazy.”  

Today, upon further inspection I saw more poo.  According to the websites, mice like to return to where they poo to eat or find water.  (Because nothing makes me hungry like a whiff of my own poo…)  But I couldn’t figure out how David Schwimmer was getting into my pantry.  I began to pull things out.  And then I saw this…

And  then this…

FYI...that's a half eaten Dum Dum.

 

And to be clear, the wall socket is not on the same shelf as the Dum Dums.  In fact, the Dum Dums are on the top shelf of the pantry.  Nor is the Dum Dum on the same shelf as the Oreos or Rice or Homemade granola that got eaten.  So David Schwimmer is apparently some type of Ninja mouse.  Hopping from one wire pantry shelf to another.  

So I’ve cleaned out the pantry, taped up the holes until I can get to Home Depot and buy a switch plate (read: tomorrow morning), every wire rack has been Lysoled.  Outsides of boxes have been wiped down or sprayed.  Food has been tossed.  Poo has been swept.  I’ve mopped.  Twice.  And then sprayed more Lysol.  

And then I found the last sticky trap, because Sloan’s flight from Seattle gets in tonight around midnight.  

*Please know that I in no way mean no harm or disrespect to the actual David Schwimmer.  I’m sure he’s a really great guy. 

**Actually, this is a lie.  David Schwimmer did voices in the Madagascar movies but some guy named Peter Sohn played the part of Emile, Remy's brother.  But nonetheless, I named the mouse David Schwimmer.  It's not like there is some device I can hold in my hand and look things up on some type of world wide information encyclopedia, people!  I'm not a witch.  Props to Allie Weippert for catching this when it was first posted.  You win a prize.  I will put David Schwimmer in your mailbox tomorrow.  You're welcome.