AN EMPTY HOUSE MEANS THERE’S
ALWAYS ROOM FOR A FEW MORE

By Dec. 16, 2007

By Mary Koch

            Friends ask with concern how I am adjusting to living alone. I assure them that I am comfortable with solitude. I was 35 when I married John and had lived alone for many years.

            Besides, I’m not alone. There’s Sadie, the people dog. There’s RC, the recluse cat. And there are the mice.

            This is an old, porous house; mice find it an accommodating bed and breakfast. RC, who to my dismay prefers song birds over rodents, is no help in fending them off.

            Before John died, his overnight caregiver Myron whiled away the long, quiet hours by trapping mice. Their favorite thoroughfare is in the ceiling above the laundry room. On a good night, Myron could nab a few in less time than it took to dry a load of towels.

            Now Myron comes by every once in a while to help me with various chores. Time to set up the mouse trap again, he recently reminded me. I knew he was right because the mice cause little pieces of old sawdust insulation to drop onto the washing machine as they scamper overhead.

            “I’ll show you how to set the trap,” he said. I don’t want to understand the mechanics of a mouse trap any more than I want to understand how a guillotine works.

            “I’d rather not,” I said.

            “You’ve got to do something,” he insisted. “They’ll start chewing on your wires.”

            It wasn’t the trap that bothered me but the knowledge that I’d have to deal with mouse corpses. Myron lives too far away for me to ask him to come by daily and empty the trap.

            “You have to be a big girl,” he preached, “just like your mother used to tell you.”

            I don’t recall Mother telling me to be a big girl. I’d always wanted to at least seem more grown up than I really was. What I didn’t bargain for was that grownups have to handle mouse traps and their victims.

            Myron pulled the trap from the little ceiling nook where he’d hidden it.

            “Eeeuw,” I said. “It’s filthy!”

            “The mice don’t care,” he said.

            “I do!” I objected.

            Myron cheerfully washed the trap and showed me how to bait it with peanut butter. Then he left.

            The next morning, the trap was sprung, of course. I donned gloves, and if I’d had a haz-mat suit I would have put that on too. Nervously, I retrieved the trap from the ceiling. I’d expected to be repulsed but felt only remorse as I dropped the tiny corpse into a plastic bag. My mind replayed all those Disney movies with their lovable, dancing mice. I’d killed this innocent critter on the dubious grounds that he was being what he was created to be.

            I’m not setting that trap again unless I find mouse droppings in the pantry or other objectionable signs of intrusion. A little sawdust on the washing machine I can tolerate. The motto “Live and let live” has taken on a whole new meaning.

© Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2007