Minimum Maintenance

At long last...

Minimum Maintenance

WWRD?

We're murdering mice here. We have no choice. Actually my husband's doing the dirty work. I simply signed the death warrant.

Many moons ago, long before Google or "Real Housewives" or Michele Bachmann, my husband and I sat by the light of an oil lamp at the cabin one stormy winter's eve and played poker and drank Jack Daniels and watched a mother mouse methodically transport a plethora of babies from one corner of our tarpaper shack to the other.

Over the counter and through the stove, to the woodbox they did go.

We'd glance up blearily, a couple of one-eyed jacks, and by the time the storm finally abated that fateful night, we'd counted no less than seven, make that eleven baby mice. In celebration of such rodential fecundity, we shot one last bump, and having affectionately bestowed Mama Mouse with the surname Roughshod, which had a certain ring to it, we closed up shop and settled in for a long winter's nap.

Twenty-five years later we woke up.

A normal red-blooded American would've put the kibosh on things that very first night. A normal red-blooded American would've JUST SAID NO. A normal red-blooded American would've had a supply of mousetraps in her storage shed, if not Decon, and failing these options, she would've simply loaded up the twenty-two and, walls be damned, there's a goddamn mouse running roughshod over the goddamn joint, BLAMMO! Take that you rat bastard, BLAMMO! I can goddamn patch that hole in the morning, I'm working on a goddamn fullhouse here!

Of course, Dear Reader, a normal red-blooded American would probably not have purchased this particular piece of property in the first place. She would've taken one look at the squirrel-and-mice-infested tarpaper shack and the Eisenhower Administration outhouse and the quarter-mile trek over rugged outcroppings down to a lake whose average temperature is 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and she would've hightailed it back to the land of sunblock and jet skis as fast as her three-quarter-ton Dodge could carry her.

As they say in this neck of the woods, it keeps the riff-raff out. "It" meaning this neck of the woods.

But even in this neck of the woods, when a mouse runs across your face as you're lying in bed trying to fall asleep after a long hard day of trekking up and down a quarter-mile path of rugged outcroppings, it's time for a new regime. The reign of the House of Roughshod had come to a close.

We swept the mouseshit off the chair seats and considered our options.

Option Number One: artillery. The only firearm we own is a pistol my father brought back from World War II, which I inherited upon his death. It currently resides inside a lockbox in a locked second floor storage cabinet at our house in town, though I seem to have misplaced the keys. In any case, there are no bullets and the pistol isn't loaded, which is more than I can say for myself most days.

Door Number Two: Decon. Does the word slowagonizingdeath mean anything to you? If so, you'll understand why Decon is not an option, she said, gazing down from her stance atop the Moral Highground.

Thirdly: the ever popular live trap. We've used these in the past, sending untold scores of Roughshod descendants into the witness protection program up across Highway 61, but for reasons unknown, the traps lost their effectiveness several years back. As if the wee varmints got hip to our tactics. And aren't they just so adorable, the little darlings, with those teeny tiny hands and those big googly eyes?

Fuck.

Moral Highground be damned, we're left with no other choice: the nuclear option.

It's fast (one can only hope), painless (one can only pray), and easy. Except this isn't moi setting the mousetraps and disposing of the bodies, this is my poor long-suffering serial-mousekiller of a husband, who at last count had already dispatched eight victims and counting, to a far far better place than that old tarpaper shack (one can only wish). Meanwhile, here I sit 150 miles away, weeping over email updates of the carnage whilst drunkenly nibbling slices of baby gouda atop Target-brand Reduced Fat Triscuit knockoffs.

I must've purchased these knockoffs last month, yeah, that's it. Because I'm currently boycotting Target, aren't you? Something to do with Michele Bachmann, I think. Or better yet one of her knockoffs, yeah, that's it.

But here's the thing: I'm morbidly distraught over this killing spree. Moi, who practices catch-and-release when it comes to wayward insects and goes on a morphine drip during deer season. Now I find myself in this goddamn ethical quandary. On the one hand, there's compassion. On the other, there's mouseshit blanketing all available surfaces in the tarpaper shack and the shitters are skittering across the bedclothes whilst we slumber.

I mean, would Richard Gere turn the other cheek after a mouse ran over it? Of course, Dear Reader, one would never find Richard Gere in a tarpaper shack with an Eisenhower Administration outhouse in the first place, now would one. Just finding Richard Gere anywhere would be the thrill of a lifetime, I'm sure. What I wouldn't give for an audience with The Man. I wonder, what would he have to say about...well, any of this? the mice? the insects? Michele Bachmann? moi?

BTW, what's your favorite Richard Gere movie? "An Officer and a Gentleman"? "American Gigolo"? "Pretty Woman"? Here's a piece of movie trivia for you: what actor played the insane killer in "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"? You guessed it!

Speaking of insane killers, I just checked my email and the death toll stands at thirteen. I need more wine. Actually, I need to shut down my computer, it's simply too distressing. Better yet, I could order a Richard Gere movie from Netflix-Play-Instantly, yeah, that's it! Here's one I've never heard of, "No Mercy." God knows what it's about, but the title has a certain ring to it, wouldn't you say?