Of Mice and Me

In a recent phone conversation with my mom, Helen DePuydt, we managed to end up talking about mice. It is funny how conversations will meander into different topics ending on one that becomes lasting memory. My mom told me about a recent infestation of mice in her house, which isn’t surprising as the house she currently lives in was built in 1965 and is surrounded by crop fields.

My mom said, “That reminds me. In the first 12 years we lived in our old house, there wasn’t one mouse. Then one summer, however, mice started to take up residence in our attic. It still puzzles me. Why did the mice show up after 12 years?”

Hum, I thought

There was this one summer day that I remember clearly. I was small; maybe four years old. It was a bright hot day. I was running around outside wearing only my white cotton underwear. At that young age, clothes were not a high priority for me, especially that day. I can remember how free it was to feel the warm air and sun directly on my skin, and to feel the grass and warm soil on the bottoms of my feet.

It was around early afternoon. My Dad came back to the house to specifically take my older siblings and me out to see the field mice he had uncovered while working in the field. He loved to show us and teach us about the creatures that lived around us. All four of us sat on the pickup tailgate with our feet dangling down as he slowly drove out to the wheat fields.

The nest was a squirming circular field of white rotating around a small patch of grey. My dad told us things about the mice, none of which I remember except that we should not touch them because the momma mouse would leave them to die.

When it was time to return, I lingered behind. When my dad wasn’t looking, I reached into the nest, carefully picked up the fully developed grey mouse and stuck it into my underwear waistband for a secure transport back home. The little feet were pressed against my skin, digging in as the truck turned corners getting back to our yard.

Back at the house, I immediately ran upstairs for my nap. I jumped under the sheet and let the little mouse go. She ran all around, side-to-side and end-to-end. She ran the length of my nearly naked body, tickling me into the giggles.

It was either the laughing that caught my mother’s attention, or that I had gone to take my nap on my own. My mom snapped back the sheet, exposing us. She spotted the mouse and screamed, “NO, NO, NO! Not in my house!”

She marched me down the stairs, opened the front door and said, “Go kill that dirty animal, NOW!”

I slowly walked down the sidewalk with the baby mouse cupped in my hands. I turned around and asked “Mommy, how do I kill a mouse?”

“I don’t know! Use a rock.”

“Use a rock how?”

“Quit wasting time! Smash its head with a rock!”

I didn’t understand but decided to try.

At the end of the sidewalk was our gravel driveway. With one hand, I found a flat rock twice the size of my small hand and put it down on the sidewalk. I went back and found another one. I then placed the mouse on one rock holding it carefully as I placed the other rock on top of it. The mouse started to squeak. I quickly removed the rock, picked the mouse up and gave him a kiss on top of his little head.

I got up and carried it back into the house.

“Mommy, it squeaks when I put the rock on it.”

“Kathleen Ann, get outside right now and kill that filthy little mouse. When you are done, wash your hands and go take your nap!”

Looking back I know my mom did not have a mean bone in her body; she just was not about to co-exist with a mouse in her home. And she wasn’t about to exterminate it either. For some reason she thought a four-year-old could.

I went back outside, and tried the laying of the rock procedure again, but I couldn’t stand the squeaking noise so I put the mouse back into the waistband of my underwear, went in, washed my hands and returned to my nap.

I can only surmise that the mouse was the mother lode of mice that invaded my mother’s house starting that 12th summer in our old house because when I woke up from my nap that day, the mouse was nowhere to be found.