Mickey and Friends
I didn’t have a creepy dead ‘mummy’ in my cold and scary Bates farmhouse. I had mice. And I still do. When old man winter arrives he drives the wee bastards inside. I really can’t blame them for wanting to escape the cold, the snow, and the absence of nibbles but I have a rule that applies to all of God’s creatures: cross my threshold, meet your doom. I have no problem with outside insects, birds, rodents, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, rabbits, and deer, but come inside and you will be murdered by the murdering murderess of mice.
Mice never seem to learn the “stay outside” gambit. Rabbits live under the deck. Birds live under the eaves. Deer live in the woods, squirrels in the trees. And today I saw a bald eagle fly over. The flies, mosquitos, gnats, lady bugs, grasshoppers, ants, beetles, and wasps live everywhere. But if they come in—and they do—they are toast, but they don’t eat my toast. I am the proud owner of two bug zappers, I go through at least two big cans of Raid every year, I have fly swatters all over the house, and big net traps outside. I lure flies into them with stinky stuff—a rotting mouse carcass does the trick. It’s a proven fact, one reason Minnesotans are so cool with winter is because the bugs are not.
Raccoons are the sneakiest in the pest world. They will get in the house, but not inside the house, more like inside the walls of the house. Or the porch roof. One day Handyman Hank was removing the old front porch ceiling and a mama raccoon and her two babies freaked out when their stealth shelter was suddenly exposed to the world by this grizzly old man weilding a hammer and crowbar. They had been living up there with the mummy of their own and as Hank pulled down a ceiling panel the skanky old dead ‘coon landed on his face. ‘Coon dust covered his hair and eyebrows and beard—and oh lord, the stench! Poop and death make a bad cocktail on a hot summer day. But Hank, because he is the kindest human on earth, built a ladder out of 2x4’s to give the mommy and her babies a way to get down without having to jump.
There will be many more stories of Hank. But for now, just know he is the reason Penny Lane is getting better all the time, and he is also the reason I have been kicked off Facebook twice.
Sometime later I successfully trapped a pair of young raccoons but Hank wouldn’t let me exterminate them. He made me drive them to a creek to set them free. I should have done what my tree man does. He spray paints their tails so he can identify them if (read: when) they return. In case you’re wondering, the answer is marshmallows, if the question is what bait did I use. ’Coons love marshmallows. The problem is, I want s’fewer of them, not s’more.
I do love beginning a sentence with “as I write this” because every time I do it is true, and not just a writer’s gimmick so to that I say, as I write this there is a mouse in the ceiling of the kitchen. I am familiar with the sound mice make as they climb up from below the house, through the kitchen wall, to the second floor. It sounds like a marble or a rock is being flipped and landing on a pipe. I’m savvy now, so I load the trap—today it is peanut butter—and I place it in a spot in Rose’s room where I know the poopy devil(s) will find it. After a day of no marble clunking I will check the trap, and…gotcha! Followed by the part I hate…the Mickey Murders. UPDATE: Another one bites the dust.
