That's What She Said: Dark days
- Dawn Dumont | December 28, 2016
You
know that sense of foreboding you get while driving down a dark Saskatchewan
road that someone is in the car with you? In my case, its pretty much accurate
as I always have company – mice.
In
late October, I realized that I had visitors when I was cleaning under the seat
of my son’s carseat and found one of his toys chewed to bits. For a second I
thought maybe our kid was part dingo – but the mouse poop beside it made it
clear. I had an infestation.
I
worried about mice crawling on my son every day as I locked him into his
carseat. But my mom says that’s not realistic. She called upon her vast
knowledge of child-rearing to assure me: “He’s at the age where he can fight
off a mouse.”
I
was skeptical. “Really? That’s on the child development charts? 18 months –
able to fight off a small rodent? So what at 24 months – is he able to strangle
a badger with his bare hands?”
Now
here the animal lovers who have extended their warm arms to rodents might want
to look away. I had no intention of ever allowing this animal to live in my
vehicle or anywhere else on this earth. I drove to town one weekend and bought
traps in the garden section of Walmart. I set them with peanut butter (yup not
my first time at the mouse rodeo) and left them overnight in my car. The next
day the peanut butter was gone but there was no carcass. My traps were duds and
my mice had received a gourmet dinner. So, I bought new traps. They also did
not work. By day three, I was wondering if I should just sleep in my vehicle
covered in peanut butter and armed with a hammer.
Fortunately
one of my friends had battled mice the year before in his rental. He gave me
some plastic traps that were guaranteed to do the job – the job here being
bloody murder.
The
traps worked. When I opened the door to my vehicle, I received a prairie
Christmas present– a dead mouse was in the trap. The other trap had peanut
butter still in it – which told me that it was just one mouse. As I gingerly
batted the trap out of the car with my ice scraper on the ground for my
boyfriend to later pick up (and complain about), I was smiling brighter than
the sun’s reflection off the snow. I was homefree.
I
paid for a de-mousing package at a Saskatoon detailer. It was expensive but how
much would you pay to erase mouse urine from your life?
When
I picked up my vehicle, I felt like a new woman. The car smelled clean, the
carpets washed and sanitized, and I could sit down knowing that I was definitely
not sitting in mouse poop. Life was a delicious rodent free cake.
Then
last Sunday, I went out to the car to look for a baby bottle that had been left
overnight. I opened the door, looked under the backseat and saw the bottle,
minus the nipple which had been chewed beyond recognition.
“I
see,” I said as I closed the door. I trudged back into the house, feeling as
chewed up as the nipple.
For
the next twelve hours, my life became a blur of setting traps, checking them,
disposing of the mouse-body, resetting them, waiting and checking. We killed
four mice that night.
I
got desperate. My partner was looking over my shoulder while I was searching
online. “You shopping for a new car?”
“My
car has mice in it.”
“Yeah
but there’s no guarantee they won’t get in the new car.”
“Then
I’ll just buy another one, and another one, and another one…”
When
I opened the door to my car the next morning on my way to work, the peanut
butter was sitting in the trap, uneaten. But I did not feel glee or even mild
joy. For I will never be truly free from the mice, I know that now. That
weekend they sent me a dark message – we can enter your vehicle when ever we
want. Wherever you go, we’ll be there too.
But on the bright side, at least I’ll never get lonely.