I watch a lot of the show Hoarders. You know the one...it's a wonderful show featuring hillbillies who sleep in tents in their backyards because the trash and crap in their home has virtually eliminated any livable space inside, or yuppies hoard collections of millions of "rare beer cans" (no joke!) and find out that these "treasures" are only worth a couple of bucks, or you have ultra-thrifty single women who won't throw out anything because they grew up poor, and will be keeping that bag of liquified, five year old chicken, thanks, because hey, waste not, want not.
Yup, that's the one.
And one common theme in all of these episodes is infestation. Bugs, critters, rodents, spiders, animal hoarding...the list goes on. So, naturally, my associations with these little monsters goes with bad housekeeping, as a rule. Normal people, for example, get, say, only one mouse, right? And he just goes away when the home owner says enough is enough. Right? RIGHT?
Nope. It's official. We've got some mice.
It started with scuttling sounds around my stove. My husband, ever so calming an influence, assured me I was wrong about there being an unwanted presence in the home, and wrote it off as vibrations from the washer and dryer. Phew.
Nope. Not hardly. While doing laundry one day, I noticed what I thought were bugs on my basement floor. I went to look, cursing my luck, and discovered it was even worse--mouse turds.
Now, I know what mouse turds are...I had a pet mouse as a kid (mice, actually, because Furrball was pregnant when we bought her), and her only joy in life was pooping all over my room. And these were mouse turds.
I wanted to do "THE HUMANE THING" and catch the mouse without killing it. I envisioned myself in hippie love beads, ceremoniously releasing this mouse into some flower-strewn park somewhere in emerald green grass, with music playing, I'm quite sure. It would be BEAUTIFUL.
The Engineer wasn't having any of that, and assured me the mouse must go, and threw down a few snap traps. In a day, the mouse met its maker.
I admit, while sad that I didn't get to release him back into nature, I was glad he was gone. And for nearly two weeks, I enjoyed a mouse-free presence in my home, even starting to breathe easier whenever I would go down into the basement to get meat from the freezer or to do laundry.
And then, there were two more. See, we had kept the traps down there under a vague assumption of "just in case," and two more mousies were waiting for me, catching me completely off guard.
After I had a panic attack, I called the husband in sheer and utter terror, no longer wanting to do "the humane thing" and simply wanting any little rodent invader killed. I had done enough research over the course of all this, and convinced myself we would all die of hantavirus or whatever other rare diseases vermin carry, and that we were, in technical terms, screwed.
But, there was one thing I was grateful for in all of this, and that was that they at least hadn't come upstairs. There was that, and I had latched onto that fact with all of the sanity I had left.
Until I found mouse crap on my food storage shelves.
And that, my friends, is when I completely lost my mind.
I cried, I hyperventilated, I cursed under my breath, I envisioned that these little beasts were simply out to kill me and my family and eat all of my precious food at the same time. Down went traps into the kitchen (one mouse caught...so far, no more since, but I reserve the right to claim it is mouse-free until WEEKS go by). I took everything out of my clean kitchen and SCRUBBED. I moved appliances and SCRUBBED. I took all of my food and placed it in air-tight containers (I'm pretty sure mice could chew through plastic if they wanted to, but it will make it harder for them). I scrubbed shelves, exposed surfaces, cabinets, reorganizing anything I could. This took about five hours in total. And the only evidence I have seen of any more mice in there is one little turd I found this morning right on the edge of the kitchen and living room, but I have found just one here and there a couple times that we have tracked in after working on the basement, so I am not convinced that there is one in my living room now, because, as we all know, mice won't leave just one little poop--they leave dozens, and one solitary poop on its own, so far, has meant we just happened to have one in our shoe.
We killed another two in our basement after the first three, bringing our total to six. We have found, and at least temporarily, sealed dropping-laden entryways we have found where they could have come in, and so far, we have had only one in livable space, and it came in through a cartoon-type mouse hole behind our fridge that was very new. I have the kitchen cleaned enough I should be able to see evidence of anything new when it happens--not that it wasn't clean before, but I have things situated so I can see a problem as it happens.
I've taken this whole thing personal. I have anxiety attacks, see, and I have been convinced that somehow, I have done something wrong to have this happen. Maybe I didn't clean enough, or maybe I lived in denial that this could ever happen to us, and what kind of mother lets this happen...all of those terrible thoughts. But, as my mother-in-law and husband have assured me, as well as a lot of friends, that this is, sad to say, a war that millions of homes wage, and that a lot of my loved ones have endured in their own homes, and that it will be won. I have made my husband promise that, if we can't combat this on our own, that we will call an exterminator, and so far, we seem to be doing OK in at least keeping ownership of our home and our things. It's war now. Screw being humane...I want the rodents dead and gone. I don't know how many more we have, but we are trying to eliminate any nests, food sources, entryways that could encourage more.
Any of you have any experience with toxic animal invaders?
**NOTE** Oh, and we have ladybugs, too. FML.
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