Mouse House

We enjoyed a lovely long drive from Maryland to Illinois and back this past weekend. It was good to see family and visit. Andrew had a chance to add to his "behind the wheel" hours required by the state of Maryland. It was a good trip with plenty of laughs and a few surprises.

The funniest surprise was that we picked up a hitchhiker along the way. Yeah, I know, this is never a safe idea. But we didn't mean too pick her up. She crawled into the car somewhere between Kewanee, IL and Columbus, OH. She made herself at home, and we just didn't realize she was there. If that's not a statement about the amount of stuff in the van, nothing could be! We never saw her. Really!

That is, until Dan reached for a tissue for me while I was driving. We had just had lunch at the Olive Garden in Frederick. We still needed to stop for gas before we drove the last 18 miles to home. Dan opened the glove compartment and reached for the tissues. Strangely, the stack of paper tissues was out of place, rumpled, and, well, shredded. From the back of the glove compartment to the front, shredded paper and cardboard (from the box of hand wipes) was spewing all over the van floor. It wasn't like this when I had reached in on Saturday evening to get Dan an Extra Strength Tums to calm his Post-Pizza-Hut-Pizza-stomach. In the hotel parking lot in Chillicothe, IL things were just fine. But now, oddly enough, the whole glove compartment was churning disorder.

I took one look across the front seat and I knew the probably source. It took Dan a little longer to figure it out. I calmly told him to close the glove compartment door. He couldn't figure out why. I repeated it calmly. "Close the glove compartment, Dan. Now." He didn't get it. So I reached across yelling something less than calm about a critter nest and tried, unsuccessfully, to slam the glove compartment door closed.

Chances are you've ever seen Dan react to unexpected critters. But let me tell you it's a real laugh. Unless you're driving! The poor guy slammed the glove box door closed. And when it bounced back open from the force of it, he was out of the seat belt and on his feet in a flash. He's not a small man, but he sure made quick to remove himself from the vicinity of that glove compartment. Over the arm of the captain seat, through the narrow space between the two front seats, over the cooler between those seats, and to the back. In just the snap of fingers. No noise. Just motion. Dan moved very quickly to the back of the van. I didn't remember that he could move so fast in such limited space.

By now, Andrew and Aaron are in stitches. Dan's sitting on the floor of the back of the van -- the two extra seats were folded down as foot rests for the boys and their "stuff." The van was still in the left lane of MD 85 heading toward Market Street in the middle of traffic. I couldn't stop. But the van was shaking with our laughter.

When we stopped to get gas, (a Sheetz gas station) I emptied the glove compartment and found the identifying "evidence" that the hitch hiker is a mouse. A nesting mouse. I cleaned up the mess as best I could but found no live being. There's a small hole in the top of the compartment where one can access the light to change it. The point of escape. She was in the dash board somewhere enjoying relative safety from her human home wreckers.

We replaced the tissues and napkins with service station blue paper towels because the hand wipe I used left the glove compartment floor and walls damp. When we arrived home, we made sure all the food crumbs and litter were removed from the car. Then we sat around the house wondering how to excise this creature. I'm all for the mouse poison. Andrew and Dan are adamant that it must be removed alive. I'm willing to do a snap- trap. They want the "poor little mousie" released into the storm pond/field beside the house.

The "poison" is large doses of "Cumadin" the human blood thinner laced into some "mousie kibble." The mouse ingests it and it gets into the blood stream. As soon the mouse gets active, any slight bruise or bump will cause massive bleeding internally. The mouse will then go out looking for water because the bleeding leaves them very thirsty. So, they go out looking for a drink, leaving the van, the garage, and my space in peace.

But Andrew and Dan want to be humane to our little hitch hiker. Internal bleeding might be painful. Or the "poor Little Mousie" might get stuck inside the van and stink it up. A sticky trap is just as inhumane because it limits the "poor little mousie's" freedom. And there's no point even asking about the snap traps... they're viscous.

We did not come to any productive conclusion. By evening yesterday, the blue paper was in tact and we all privately hoped the mouse was adding some Illinois diversity to the gene pool in the storm pond beside our house. But it was not to be.

This morning Dan and Andrew went to the gym at 5:00. When they returned, they brought news that the mouse was still in the glove compartment. But she didn't like the lovely blue paper towels. She had "redecorated" with the green fiberglass firewall material from the back of the dashboard. Lots of it. The glove compartment was heaping full of shredded green with hints of blue here and there. And I do mean full. It tumbled to the floor when I opened it up to clean it out.

Yes, I again had to clean it out. So much for a "shared responsibility marriage." Dan wouldn't go within 3 feet of it. He stood at the garage door, his head peaking out from behind it while he stood in the safety of the laundry room, while I cleaned out the shredded décor and cleaned out the glove compartment with anti- bacterial wipes. He removed himself from sight when I closed the van door and placed the bag of "mouse house" into the garbage can beside the door. Dan may clean cat boxes, but forget about cleaning mouse houses. It's just not in his repertoire.

So after the boys left for school, I went to Ace Hardware to get supplies. Dan insisted upon going with me, however. We had a few moments of marital strain in the "Pest Control" aisle before we reached a compromise. I bought "live traps" to try first. If they are not effective, I'll back them up with the poison. However, Dan will not agree to empty the live traps. He wouldn't even set them. "The Poor Mousie...." (Eyes rolling over the back of my head.)

Have you ever seen a "Have a Heart" live trap for a woodchuck? Well, these look NOTHING like those. These are little plastic boxes, the size of match boxes, open at only one end with a "SeeSaw" in the middle of the bottom. When the mouse upsets the SeeSaw, the door over the front closes and locks.

The only problem is that they are designed to exist on a kitchen counter or under a sink. Not in a vehicle where the whole thing moves all the time. All it takes is closing the glove compartment to set it off. Or, closing the van door. There's no hope of driving down the driveway without snapping the trap closed.

I loaded the things down with peanut butter -- the only thing that would work to hold them in the correct position. Then I gently placed them in the glove compartment with a stack of McDonalds napkins and gingerly closed the door.

How it's going to ever work is a real mystery to me. But for Dan's and Andrew's sake, I've left it in the glove box with ORDERS to not drive the van, not to touch the van, not to breath near the van. If there's no "Poor little Mousie" in those boxes by tomorrow evening, I'm replacing the live traps with the box of poison and parking the van on the street. I don't want a dead "Poor Little Mousie" stuck between the dashboard the the frame of the van because that could really be unpleasant in the summer heat, but I'm not willing to have a family of "poor little mousies" in my van either.

It's all wrong, you know. That an Illinois mouse would find it's way into a Maryland van. I'm sure that somewhere in the blue laws there must be something about it being immoral and illegal to carry a live mouse in your gloves. Or perhaps it's an offense to interbreed an Illinois Farmer with a Maryland Suburbanite. If it's not, well I think we need a new law on the books! <>

If you have any creative and effective ways to excise Illinois mouse from a Maryland van, I'm all ears. I'll nibble at anything that might work at this point.