The shrill came bursting from the mud room into the solitude of my home office. Instead of being the wonderful, supportive, leap into action husband that I should be I thought "Ugh, now what?" Mind you after living in the country for nine months now I've come to expect all sorts of mini-emergencies, from cracks, leaks and assorted broken things. What's one more thing?
"A mouse just crawled over my coat in the closet!!"
Damn it! Not again. Those rat (mice) bastards followed us from Westminster. Now granted, living in a more rural area the chances of crossing paths with wee critters is much greater than when we lived in suburbia. I just didn't want to have to add this to my long list of things to "fix" around here. To be honest I can't say I was terribly surprised by the recent incursion. Intelligence reports from a couple days earlier showed evidence that the enemy was on the move. I had gone into our outdoor closet, just off the patio, to look for some things for our Easter gathering. I noticed that the unopened bag of bird seed had been torn into, significantly. Like all good commanders I ignored the warning signs, promising myself I'd deal with the enemy on a later date. The barbecue must go on.
So when my darling wife was ambushed by this three inch beast I knew I had to take action and quickly. A husband slow to come to the aid of his wife is only asking for trouble. So when under attack what do you do? Call in the cavalry! As the mouse made his way into the living room I trapped him with the giant bean bag. Quite the manly thing to do. While I was working to contain the rodent, Julie dashed off to call to arms our trained killer - Gracie the cat. Her reputation as a take no quarter, give no quarter, death to all mice at all cost to preserve the union and ensure democracy for all was well earned during our stay in Westminster. It was time to unleash hell on this new threat to the sanctity of our country home. As we had done once before in our old house, we had trapped the mouse and positioned the cat so that she could make a lightening fast, surgical strike once we removed the obstacle.
"Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!!" Ok, I didn't really say that but it does add some dramatic flair to this story. With Gracie in position I raised the bean bag and waited for the inevitable, swift death that would befall this little creature. But it didn't come. No screeching, no crunching, no blood spattering. It was as if time had frozen. Both cat and mouse as well as the two human spectators stood motionless waiting for something to happen. What happened next would go down as one of the greatest shameful tragedies in the annuls of cat history. The mouse, realizing his predicament, decided to take action and bolted in the direction of the cat. What first appeared to be a suicide run into the jaws of death turned out to be a dash to freedom. In complete "beast mode" the mouse ran towards the cat, over her paws and continued towards the goal line behind the couch, unscathed by the feline killing machine.
ARE YOU FRICKIN' KIDDING ME!!?? Death, where is thy sting!? Surely victory was at hand but
just like that it was the mouse that snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and certain death. Perhaps noticing my anger and disappointment, my ever faithful Golden Lab Sophie decided to chase off this would-be cat into the other room, exacting her own form of punishment towards a cat who failed on so many levels. Throughout this entire engagement Belle, the Princess Chihuahua, sat perched up on the couch, choosing a position of neutrality rather than risk having the blood of a mouse on her paws.
So it was a dark day in our Brighton animal kingdom. Mouse 1, John 0. But all was not lost. In the aftermath of this day which will live in infamy, I cleaned out the outdoor closet and in the process found a cohort of our intruder. I was in the process of ShopVac-ing (is that a word?) the remnant bird seed when I found and cornered ANOTHER mouse. This time, things would be different. I won't go into the gory details but let's just say that a mouse CAN fit through a ShopVac. Some clean up was involved but now there's one less mouse in the house. Mouse 1, John 1.
The Jihad is on, baby!
