And all through the house…
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. Merry Night-Before-Christmas and Merry Christmas!]
…a creature was stirring.
Last night was Christmas Eve. I was expecting a visit from my son, who was flying in as a rare treat. I had tidied up, and was putting on the finishing touches while waiting for him to arrive from the airport. As I was poised at the top of the staircase on my way down from the second floor, I saw a movement on one of the lower steps.
A dark shape. A small dark shape—very still, and then in motion again. With tiny little ears, and a long tail.
A mouse. Very much stirring.
I let out a shriek, like in the cartoons. Yes, I know that mice do not hurt people. But yes, they give me the willies when they startle me and scurry around—like—mice. The few times when this has happened before, they’ve always sought the little opening from whence they’d come and scurried away, hardly ever to be seen again.
But this mouse seemed to be lost and disoriented. Maybe because it was almost midnight on Christmas Eve, and no creature was supposed to be stirring. In the midst of my unreasonable fear was a sort of amusement. What was it doing here, this evening of all evenings?
The mouse was still on the staircase landing, and although I assumed that somehow it had managed to climb the three stairs to where it was, it appeared to be perplexed about how to get up or down from there. I watched it from what I considered a safe distance at the top of the stairs, and I could see it moving back and forth, back and forth, first towards the wall and then towards the edge of the step, but it could not seem to get the courage to make a break for it.
What did I do? I called my son and asked how far away he was. Forty-five minutes. And then I settled in, not for a long winter’s nap but for a long viewing from a good vantage point to monitor the mouse’s position till he arrived. For the moment, the mouse seemed quite well-contained on the stairs, but I didn’t trust that—and sure enough, slowly but surely, with many fits and starts, it managed to get back down those three stairs to the ground floor.
Now, it turns out that watching a mouse is actually sort of interesting. This one darted from stair-bottom to hall to bathroom to bedroom and back again (my place is built upside-down, with the bedroom and bathroom downstairs and living room and kitchen upstairs). I had a special horror of the mouse being in the bedroom—so after its one foray into the bedroom for five minutes and then out again, I slammed the bedroom door shut and placed a thick towel to block the crack at the bottom. The towel seemed to act as an effective barrier, like a small mountain range, and the mouse didn’t venture into that room again.
But back and forth it went—along the wall in the hall, into the bathroom, up a few stairs and then back down them again. I noticed that it seemed to get smarter and smarter; each time it climbed the stairs it was better at it, until it seemed as though it had been doing this all its little life.
And then by trial and error it found the molding along the side of the stairs, which then acted as a sort of ramp by which the mouse could easily climb all the way to the top. This filled me with dread. I was conceding the downstairs for now, but the upstairs was my territory! But what to do? That molding-ramp made it so easy; the mouse was coming up in a determined sort of way, till I could look into its beady little eyes and it could look into mine. I let out another involuntary yelp, stamping my feet and clapping my hands, trying to make enough noise to frighten it off.
I looked and sounded completely and utterly ridiculous.
And yet it was effective; the little thing stopped in its tracks, then turned and went back downstairs again, to my great relief. Then a few minutes later it came up the ramp-molding again, and I re-enacted the same stupid pantomime I had before. The mouse kept coming—up up up, light and fleet of foot, relentless and implacable. I actually thought of throwing something at it to head it off—perhaps my shoe, like Clara in “The Nutcracker.” But oh, for a platoon of tin soldiers like hers! (I’ve cued up this video to start at the right spot, although it’s mistitled because these are not meant to be rats, they’re mice):
But alas, we were alone, just the two of us, mousie and me. And I didn’t really want to hurt it, which I thought might happen if I threw my shoe, so I reached for a pillow—and at that moment I heard the key turn in the lock and my son walked in.
I’m always happy to see him, but perhaps never so happy as this time, as I stood at the top of the stairs in a semi-crouch, clutching a small pillow and making silly-yet-hopefully-scary noises at a mouse that was climbing a molding-ramp on the edge of the staircase.
My son managed to keep his disdain under control long enough to catch the mouse in a plastic container and escort it outside to be released, but not before we took a photo though the plastic. Yes, the mouse is cute. But no, I don’t want him in my house, not on Christmas Eve or any other time.
It is rather difficult to get an old New England house to a mouse-free state.
When my cat brings a mouse into the house, I get a broom and chase it toward the door. This usually works. I think Milly has gotten rid of the mice in our yard because I haven’t seen one in quite a while. We are now getting visits (outside only) from a racoon.
Merry Christmas everyone.
That face through the plastic looks so crafty! Almost as if it were plotting to take over the world!! (The mouse has a color scheme similar to that of the hamster I used to have.) Merry Christmas, New Neo.
I was sitting reading one evening when I looked up and saw a mouse trotting along the base of a book case. He was oblivious of my presence, it seemed, but then he looked at me and saw that I was looking at him. He jumped straight up in the air and turn to go back the way he came. I had not moved; just looked at him.
Eye to eye confrontation. I just let him go.
No, it wasn’t Christmas Eve. We are waiting to go to my son’s where he has 40 people coming for dinner. Merry Christmas.
I enjoyed this tale as much as the first time I read it. Grinning from ear to ear. You are a wonderful writer. Merry Christmas!
We have some children’s books that involve mice, and some of the illustrations look just like you pictures.
I wonder why there are so many books about cute little mice when most people can’t abide the real ones?
Thanks for reposting the story.
It’s like going to family Christmas and hearing all one’s favorite aunts and uncles tell the old familiar tales.
We don’t do enough of that these days.
It is especially difficult to get any New England house permanently mouse free.
Wonderful story.
Merry Christmas to you and all.
It is difficult to get any house mouse free. We live in a semi rural area (use to be rural but too many housing developments going in) in a house we built 40 yrs ago. Have not seen a mouse in the house for a while now. One night two of our cats were getting very interested in something in our bedroom on the second floor. I turned on the light there it was – A Mouse! I managed to get a towel over it before the cats got to it. Took it outside and let it go. The cats gave me a very dirty look.
You especially don’t want that mouse. That is a deer mouse, which are nothing but disease vectors.
Merry Christmas Boss…I pray that it’s blessed with everything good.
and that all your mice be sojourners, not immigrants. 😉
And yet, and yet…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6527365/Three-blind-mice-help-scientists-uncover-genes-vision-loss.html
A verye merrye Christmas to you all….
Merry Christmas to all ….
And my mouse story… I live in a semi-rural area (small city with lots of trees) in Oklahoma. My mom lived in Michigan and I would go for Christmas and a few weeks in snowy MI and then bring her back to OK for a few months. So, we are back in OK and we both were seeing something darting along the room edges. For a day or so, we both thought that we were crazy or had a bunch of eye floaters. And then we found the evidence – no, not the normal evidence of mice, but small piles of thistle seeds stashed between towels, under pillows or seat cushions, in between something on the top shelf of a closet, in a shoe and so on.
I had a bag of thistle seed in the garage. Somehow, this team of field mice got into the garage, found the bag, got into the house and were being good mice in stashing their find all over the house. I soon discovered that in many areas, the visible side of a door frame looked well built, but the backside, there were gaps. A piece of quarter-round would have closed the space off. But, I had duct tape as a faster way of sealing off the possible entry points. It’s been a while, I probably need to check/replace the duct tape.
And, I discovered that you really need to superglue the piece of cheese to the mouse trap. I don’t think I could have trapped a mouse in a plastic tub – your son was super fast!
It took a few weeks before we were sure that the invasion had stopped. In the meantime, I did a deep cleaning of all closets and other possible hidey-holes. I think it was about six months before I had my last seed-shower surprise. To this day, I am still wary of spaces, expecting to see a small pile of thistle seed come down on me.
Be thankful that only mice are involved. We tend to have giant rats in our wooded community. 20 years ago our rental house had roof rats that can jump a couple feet or more and jump through open windows.
Recently, my wife has been helping a client who is an old man who is a recent widower (she feels sorry for him) and has a rat problem. At his direction, she put out spring mouse traps. I told her that that isn’t going to work. Then they put out spring rat traps, which worked. Then the rats came back; maybe the guy leaves his door open? The standard rats traps weren’t big enough, and my wife got the special order, super sized rat traps. Now, thankfully, it seems that his children have gotten involved, though they don’t live nearby.
Cue the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Civilization was lost when the mouse bwcame the good guy, and the bad guy was the cat.
And then there’s the rasta pooch, mon:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6528613/Moppy-Christmas-Worlds-SHAGGIEST-dogs-snowy-traipse-Russia.html
Whether for live trapping or snap-traps, I have found that mice can’t resist a combination of bacon and peanut butter as bait. I was put on to this years ago by a fellow working in a hardware store who had done college work in a rat lab (I was buying mouse traps). He told me the more rancid the bacon, the more attractive it is (but who keeps rancid bacon?). Unless the mice are not hungry (i.e., they’ve found your bird’s birdseed) I usually catch them within about 8 hours.