The Mouse

Growing up, I lived in a trailer, known in the north as a mobile home, I believe. For those who haven't lived in a trailer, the walls are maybe 1/8" thick and sound from one end travels fairly well to the other end. Quiet noises don't pass along, but anything louder than a normal speaking voice is quite audible.

Because my dad is amazingly handy with virtually any tool and because a trailer is really not big enough for a family of four with genes that lean towards portly, we had an addition that ran three-fourths the length of the trailer down the back side. Instead of walking in the back door and facing down our washing machine, you would enter what would probably be considered a parlor. My dad's desk with our word processor and my mom's piano that no one could really play sat with a rocking chair and the cabinet that held all of our photographic memories along with some seriously kickin' vinyls from my parents' early years.

The second room off that was the "mud room," a misnomer if ever I heard one because it contained my dad's tools, all his fishing equipment, an upright freezer, the dryer, and a chest freezer that functioned as a folding table. Mud was not allowed in the room and if you actually walked in with any on your shoes, you'd track it across the parlor, which we affectionately called "the back room" since we were so creative overall.

If you stepped to the right when facing the washer that was formerly right at the back door's entrance, you'd enter the bathroom. If you turned left instead, you'd quickly come to my bedroom, the first door on the right on the hall that used to give me nightmares about endless tunnels. My room was just wide enough that I could fully stretch my arms and not touch the walls. I had just enough room to open my dresser drawers without touching the side of my twin bed and there was just enough space at the foot of my bed to remove a book from the bookshelf that went almost to the ceiling.

The next door on the right, after you passed the furnace cover, was (and still is some 18 years later) cheerfully decorated with Winne-the-Pooh wallpaper and bright red curtains. When my brother turned six, my mom tried to redecorate, but he pitched a fit. Since he grew into a deep voice at the age of 10 and became an official redneck at about 13, this room has always amused me at a fundamental level. He's a manly man, though good-hearted, and even at 10, he was very aware of his masculine image.

My parents had the master bedroom on the other side of the bathroom that actually had two doors--one to the bathroom and one to the hallway--and offered the most privacy of anywhere in our home.

In later years I realized just how sneaky my parents really are, but as a child, even at 14, I didn't realize that they were feeding me information early in the mornings through that bathroom wall. I always thought I was eavesdropping and that they still thought I was asleep. These conversations were how I discovered that we had a mouse problem happening. Of course, everyone in the house discovered this simultaneously since those thin walls did nothing to slow the scream my mom let out when she opened a draw to put on her makeup and a mouse smiled at her.

After we all recovered from the jump start to our hearts so early in the morning, my dad set a trap in the drawer and we all headed to school for the day. When we got home, Mama checked the drawer and, sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap. Daddy did his masculine duty and chucked the corpse out the back door for the dogs to eat. Mouse problem solved.

We had a normal dinner like any normal family and continued on with our normal routines. I talked to my boyfriend on the phone and then read a book until bedtime, and my brother watched a little TV, then holed up in his room with his country music on the radio. My parents did whatever it was they did in the evenings after I hid in my room, teenagers being what they are and me fairly typical of the breed.

All was calm and peaceful until my mom, after bidding me goodnight as I read myself to sleep, went to take off her makeup. She opened the drawer and let out another blood-curdling scream. This one was followed by another more frantic shout that almost covered the sound of the drawer slamming shut.

"Nelson!" (That's my dad.) "There's a mouse in the drawer!"

My dad came into the bathroom and opened the drawer. "I don't see anything," he said.

"I saw it! I think it was the same mouse! It had a mark across its forehead where the trap closed on it!"

I heard a pacifying grunt that was obviously meant to convey belief but fell far short of the mark. My mom's tone turned more shrill.

"Something was wrong with it, too!" she proclaimed. "It ran at me when I screamed!"

"Well, it's gone now," he said, and gratefully returned to the television in his bedroom. I finished my chapter and turned off the lamp, leaving on only my nightlight. (I'm still phobic of the dark.)

Later, I woke from a sound sleep wondering why I had woken up at all. I lay still for a second and then I heard this strange scratching sound right beside my ear. As my fuzzed brain tried to place what it could be, the poppy noise moved down my mattress, keeping on the side of the mattress that was pushed up against the wall. I was definitely awake now, since nothing I could think of made any sense in conjunction with that strange noise and the inch of space between my mattress and the wall.

Then the noise hit the end of the mattress and stopped. I heard a slight thump only slightly louder than my heart pounding in my ears, and next I saw a mouse happily buzzing across the tops of my alphabetized-by-author paperbacks on the third shelf.

I did what any 14-year-old girl who realizes a mouse was less than three inches away from her head when she woke up does: I leaped out of the bed and screamed.

"DADDY! DADDYYYYY!"

I backed up in the tight space between my bed and the dresser because I couldn't run past the bookcase to get in the hall.

"There's a MOUSE in my room! Daddy! Daddy!"

Now any self-respecting mouse would run like a fiend when presented with the level of noise I was making. Not this one. It did a couple of laps over the tops of the paperbacks and then jumped back on the mattress, skittering between the mattress and the wall back to wherever it had come from.

When my dad arrived in his tighty-whities and trailing the cord from his sleep apnea machine still attached to the mask fastened over his face, he wasn't happy.

"Ain't no damn mouse!" he swore, and he reached down and jerked my mattress off its boxsprings to illustrate his point, slamming it back down hard enough to rattle all the knick-knacks on my dresser top.

Then my brother screamed. I've told you he had a deep voice, even at 10. His scream, however, would have worked for any girl in a horror movie or a six-year-old on the playground. Girlie doesn't even touch the high register that blared from his vocal chords as he sprinted out of his room in his white Fruit-of-the-Looms.

"It ran across my chest!" he trilled as he went past.

Daddy stepped out of my door in time to be knocked into the wall by my brother's flight to the top of the washing machine where he remained perched for the rest of the debacle that followed.

The positive outcome of my little bro's loud flight was that my father finally believed me about the mouse. He really had no choice; it ran across his foot as it chased my brother down the hall.

Daddy and I watched in disbelief as the mouse slid around the corner and into the bathroom. Before we could do more than exchange an amazed glance, my mother screamed and we ran into their bedroom.

My mom was staring at the floor and I made a long jump onto their bed that would have made any track competitor proud.

"It ran under the bed," she told us with high excitement.

My dad took a second to remove his mask and then dropped to his hands and knees to see if he could scare it out into the open. To assist him in getting far enough under the queen-sized bed, he grabbed a light blue foam noodle, about four feet long, that we used for swimming during the summer. My mom leaned over her side of the bed and watched for the mouse as Daddy poked the noodle under the bed. When it ran out, she screeched and it promptly turned around and ran back under the bed.

Daddy hopped up and noodled under her side of the bed while I watched the floor on my side. When the mouse ran out, I squealed, and--you guessed it--the mouse turned towards my voice and ran back under the bed. This exchange of poking, exiting, screaming, and hiding continued for at least four more passes apiece. By this time, we had realized that the mouse was running towards our screams, but my mom and I were laughing so hard at my dad's cussing and noodling that it was impossible to not shriek when we saw it. Finally, I made no noise when it came out my side and it took off back through the bathroom and into the hallway with my dad in hot pursuit.

My brother shrieked from the top of the washing machine that it had gone into the back room, and my dad sped into the mud room and grabbed his seining net from his fishing gear. My mom spread the big green net so that its white foam floats were weighing down the bottom and she held it in place against the door frame.

Daddy picked up one of his dress loafers from beside the door, still in his underwear, and started surveying the room for the mouse's hiding spot. He spotted its tail disappearing behind the piano.

He barked an order at my brother: "Go get your bb gun."

"I ain't getting off this washer!" my brother growled emphatically.

"I'll get it," I volunteered and ran for Winnie-the-Pooh's domain.

I emerged with the stylized bb gun which was designed to look like an M16 machine gun, which I only know because of the giant gold sticker on the side with "M16" written in bold, black letters. I handed it to Daddy across our green barricade and the picture that he made was forever stamped on my mental eye.

My dad stood in his white Hanes, the bridge of his nose still reddened from his sleeping mask, holding a black machine gun in his right hand Rambo-style, and a brown dress loafer in his left hand. All his attention was focused on the piano. Beside me, my mother held her breath as she waited and my lily-livered brother whimpered a little from the washer behind me.

Daddy shouted and the mouse ran straight for him. He drew a careful bead on it, squinting one eye, and pulled the trigger slowly.

"EEEEEEE!" The mouse squealed as it did a backwards somersault in the air, actually forming a circle with its body while air born. It was one of the cooler things I've ever seen.

Apparently, Daddy shot it in the butt because it began running in a circle, chasing its own tail. I've always thought that the perfect "O" it formed while sprinting was uncanny. Daddy sat the machine bb gun on the rocking chair and leaned over with the shoe. BAM! The terror of the mouse was ended.

Daddy picked it up by the tail and peered closely at it to be sure that it really was dead this time. Sure enough, we could see that the poor thing had a bar right across its head, forming a sort of unibrow. He opened the back door and tossed it out, then went straight back to bed as though nothing had happened.

Mama and I met each other's eyes and burst out laughing. We turned around, saw my brother sliding off the washer, and doubled over. We laughed so hard that I sat down in the floor and couldn't move and my mother quite literally wet her pants. Daddy started cursing at us to shut up and go back to bed since it was around 2 in the morning and we headed in that direction as soon as we could get enough air to move.

We lay in bed laughing until Daddy cursed again, and then I tried really hard to stop. As soon as I'd stop, though, my mom would start again. Daddy would yell and Mama would stop and I would start again. After an hour or so of exchanging the giggles, Daddy threatened bodily harm and we finally got ourselves under control.

Live traps are my method of choice with mice now that I have my own home. They may occasionally chew their way out, but I've not been chased by one since I switched.