Donovan Kelly

On Mouse Day,
a Wise Man Heeds the Call

Gentlemen, start your peanut butter. As we approach the cream of the couch potato season, when football, basketball and hockey blend into a perfect sports stew, another annual event threatens our male peace.

Because as autumn temperatures drop, mouse scouts and travel agents begin inspecting potential mouse-perfect warm winter vacation resorts, many of which look just like your home and mine.

Welcome to Mouse Day.

Usually it is not the mouse scout that is seen, but rather his calling cards. Foolish husbands ignore these calling cards. The same foolish men who hesitate when the wife asks, “ Does this dress make me look fat?”

Pay attention, gentleman. That tiny first mouse turd is bigger than a charging linebacker. It’s Mars vs. Venus time and the couch potato season is threatened by male inaction.

I know. My wife and I shared our first mouse in our first home, a lovely rustic log cabin on the edge of the Catskills. Or as some might say, a drafty, creaky, lonely place on the edge of nowhere.

To illustrate, let me introduce the nowhere phone company. The cabin shared a party line, which meant that the company-supplied phone rang loudly once for us and twice for the nearest neighbors, a half mile away. My wife called to request that the ring tone be lowered because it woke up our new baby. The company suggested we put a pillow over the phone.

My wife reminded them that we had a wall phone. Without a pause, they updated their first suggestion. “ Try propping a broom handle against the pillow.” Welcome to Nowhere.

The mouse got to the nowhere cabin first, but welcomed us and our bread crumbs with open arms. We all met at supper. From the dining table we heard scratching in the kitchen and saw tiny little paws reaching through a hole, eagerly trying to make a bigger, more neighborly hole.

Feeling the husbandal pressure to take immediate decisive action, I stuffed steel wool into the hole. Before I could bask in my wife’s approval, tiny little paws were pushing the steel wool out and scratching again. Escalating my response, I squirted bug spray into the hole. The mouse started coughing. Then tiny little paws began pulling the steel wool back into the hole.

My wife might have been more amused by the whole incident, except she knew that I would soon leave Nowhere to go to work in the big city, leaving her alone in the middle of nowhere with only the baby and a coughing mouse for company. Not to mention the pillow that kept falling off the wall phone.

Which explains why today, before the big game, I am dutifully dabbing peanut butter on mouse traps.

(Kelly writes from a mouse-free zone in Hamilton. He can be reached at donovanwrites.com.)