Taking a cue from him, I'm going to just help myself to telling you about my day. We had a mole in our house today. A mole! Who has moles in their house?!
Douglas was playing in the living room this morning and got up on the couch while calmly telling me something about a thing running under the couch. It took me a minute to even realize what he was talking about, at which point I went in, sat down on the step to the living room, and proceeded to talk to him about spiders and how they're our friends and that we don't have to be afraid of them. When he was still not budging, I even threw in the whole "They make webs that catch mosquitoes. And mosquitoes bite, so spiders actually help us!"
He tells me the thing went under the couch so I lay down on the floor and look (because I think I'm looking for a SPIDER) and see nothing (thank you, sweet baby Jesus). While I'm still in the middle of my best Mom speech about being brave and that he doesn't have to be afraid, I hear a crinkling sound a few feet to my left and I know it's the wipes case that sits in the diaper basket. I jump up and stand there in stunned silence trying to decide whether I'm hearing things or not. Could Douglas have actually seen a mouse?! We have never, in seven years (knock on wood), had mice in this house. I ask him what color it was and he says black. I ask if it had fur and he says yes.
Holy hell.
At that very moment, a little rodent scurries right freaking in FRONT of me, over the towel that I had dropped on the floor in my initial moment of panic. HE RAN OVER MY KITCHEN TOWEL!
I would like to say that I was calm and did a good job not freaking out since my 2-year-old son was staring at me, afraid, but I cannot say that. Or anything even close to that.
Instead, I cupped my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. My eyes were wide in terror. It didn't matter that this rodent was way smaller than the palm of my hand. When things like this happen to me, the hair on the back of my neck literally stands up. I can literally feel my skin crawling. I fully grasp the reality that mice are not dangerous and that some people actually like them and think they're cute - that many people wouldn't freak out at the sight of a small rodent in their living room. But I was definitely not made that way - I'm the kind who freaks out. I know most of you are laughing at me right now, and I'm ok with that.
So the bravest thing I could conjure up was to cup my hand over my mouth. I knew Douglas was watching. I had the presence of mind to at least hear the internal warning, "Be careful with what you say and do! Your son is watching you. He's nervous and he's watching you to find out if he should be downright terrified." But I couldn't stop myself. So Douglas started crying and saying, "Mommy, don't do that!" while he put his hand to his mouth like I did to show me what "that" was that he wanted me to stop doing. I paused for a moment, knowing I had to run in there with the mouse and grab my son from the couch and carry him to the kitchen, even if it meant risking that creepy thing scurrying across the tops of my bare feet.
I looked in horror at the living room and saw everything that was on the floor for him to scurry over. My favorite blanket. My slippers. Thomas the Train set. A million toys. My kitchen towel. "Damn, I wish I had cleaned up last night!!"
For the next hour, I frantically cleaned the kitchen to make our house as unappealing to the mouse as possible. Timon was luckily asleep upstairs. Douglas sat on the counter in the safe zone and kept a lookout for me. I told him to watch the step from the kitchen to the living room and tell me if the mouse climbed the step.
I called Micah on the verge of tears. His assistant answered. I said that I needed her to tell him to come home right away - that we had a mouse in the house. She laughed. I was SO not joking. I said with great intensity (while trying not to cry), "My kid is crying and this thing is running over all of our stuff. So I need you to interrupt his meeting right now." Micah told me to just leave the house and that he would call someone to deal with it. In the process of packing up and cleaning the kitchen before we left, I saw the house guest scurrying all over the living room - all. over. It was impossible to miss him. I wasn't even trying to find him and I would see him because he was circling the room. Behind and under the tool bench, under the pack and play, skirting along the edge of the freaking TRAIN TRACK, behind the chair, then again at the entryway to the living room where he would start all over again.
We left the house and I called my mom. She explained to me that mice are skittish and are pretty much never out and about during the day. They are usually hiding and only come out when people aren't around. This was no ordinary mouse. I said I thought it was a baby because its tail was short, not really developed. She said it sounded like it was blind and was just trying to find a way out. I had at one point witnessed it sortof bumping into the leg of our chair. We decided it had birth defects and was blind. Poor little guy. I still wanted it to get the heck out of our house, though. I also decided there was perhaps a nest in the chimney and this one had fallen - you know, from the blindness and all. The door to the fireplace was open last night, so he must have gotten in that way. I was sure there were probably several siblings right behind him.
Micah, my knight in shining armor, came home a couple hours later (while I was still out of the house) and escorted the intruder outside. I haven't asked how. I don't want to know. But he did somehow get it outside. He informed me that it was probably a mole because it was so dark and had that weird tail.
In search of reassurance, I called my father-in-law, Doug. I told him that I think of him as some kind of animal whisperer who somehow just knows things about vermin and that I needed his help. I told him the situation. He asked if it had a long tail - no. He asked if it had a pointy nose - yes. A mole. Definitely a mole. He said they are kindof blind (I knew it!), so he was crawling on our stuff on accident as he followed his nose trying to get out. Then, God bless him, Doug told me all I needed to know about moles in order for me to move on with my life. Moles eat grubs and some other insect. There is no food source inside for him. He got in completely on accident and wanted to find a way out. There is practically no chance of another one getting back in the house. No, there's no way they are nesting in the chimney (turns out they burrow under ground outside). His friends are not going to follow him inside. The door was left open a lot during our recent (and interminable - but that's a whole other story that I won't share because it's annoying) window project, so the confused blind mole ended up inside and couldn't find his way out. He said to just wash whatever he was on (just in case) and look for any "fecal matter" to make sure the kids don't get to it.
I picked up every toy on the floor with a rag and threw them into a bowl. I threw anything cloth that was on the floor into the washer. And then I maniacally cleaned every single toy that the mole could have come in contact with. Many of which had no business getting wet. Like the cardboard blocks. No matter. Mole germs were not going to get my kids sick - not on my watch! Hopefully Douglas will be able to see the big picture when some of his toys no longer work quite the same.
That "good helper" Douglas complimented also left me a surprise on the counter in the kitchen after he evicted the mole. It was a brown paper bag that said "Mice Eraser" - inside it was a ginormous bottle of tequila. I really like that man.
Tonight at the dinner table, Douglas let out a big sigh and rested his head in his hands. I asked if he was tired and he said, "I'm just pretty tired after dinner. I'm tired from The Fuzz."
