Freak Magnet Dave

Nothing gets a person moving like the prospect of having people over for dinner. I must say that since our move...oh...nearly four months ago, we still have a boatful of stuff to dig through and unpack. Actually, it's not a boatful, but a garageful. Among the items I have been dying to excavate are my wine and martini glasses. I haven't had a drink since we moved! Let me correct that. I haven't had a drink out of anything other than a juice glass since we moved.

The friends who are coming over for dinner have had us over to their place a couple of times and it's a beautiful home. I figure that despite the fact that our place currently looks like a "before" picture, I could at least summon up the ambition to tackle the garage and find the appropriate drinking vessels.

Let me draw you a mental picture of the scene. Double garage. No room for a car. Not even room for a bicycle, although there is a rumour going around that there is, in fact, a bicycle in there somewhere. There are cabinets sitting empty and boxes full of items that could nicely be held in said cabinets if one could only get to them. There is a sofa that we don't have room for, so that has been "dibbed" by The Squeeze's brother when he gets his apartment this week. There are bags and bags of winter clothing that we thankfully haven't had cause to uncover yet. Suffice to say, it's a mess in there.

Sunday evening I got the urge to wade through the minefield and organize. I started by digging through the boxes that blocked my path to the large cabinet I was determined to put against the wall and fill with occasionally used appliances. Much to my delight I managed to find our cutting boards which for several weeks I have sorely missed. I continued on to moving the bags of clothing into the house so we could go through them and prepare for the cold weather that is bound to arrive at some point.

Before I was able to move the cabinet from the middle of the room, I needed to move a huge heavy banquet table that was leaning on the cabinet. The Squeeze agreed to take a break from cooking to give me a hand hoisting the table against the wall and out of my way. I pulled his tool cabinet away from the wall so the table could be stored there and that is when I discovered a pile of niger seed on the floor. I saw that there was a bag of the seed that the previous owners left behind on a shelf above the pile. There must be a hole torn in the bag, I thought. Uh-oh...what poked the hole in the bag? The alarm in my head sounded. I called for The Squeeze. Now the beauty here is that The Squeeze works in the pest control field. I couldn't have been in better hands.

He came out to investigate, trusty flashlight in hand, and came to the conclusion that yes, indeed, we had a mouse. Figuring he made that deduction as a result of seeing droppings, I said, "are you sure they aren't all just seeds?" After all, the niger seeds do look like little mouse droppings to my untrained eye. He just poined the trusty flashlight to a...um...overly puffy-looking seed. "The seeds aren't that big," he replied. Don't doubt the ex-Terminator!

After we got the table into position behind the tool chest, The Squeeze grabbed a few snap traps from his truck and gave them all a dab of peanut butter and he strategically placed them along the wall. He returned to his cooking, and I cautiously continued my work. I slid the couch along the floor and as I did this, a blanket that was stacked atop some boxes and partially leaning on the couch became a niger seed dispenser. A pile of seed poured from the blanket onto the floor. Needless to say, I screamed for The Squeeze. He came out, calmly eyed the situation and concluded that they must be nesting in the blanket. Ewwwwwwww! Not a big deal, really. It was only a car blanket I had pulled out of my car when I traded it in and I never bothered to put it in the land yacht yet. Procrastination is my strong suit. I hit the garage door opener and The Squeeze scooped up the blanket and walked it into the driveway and he shook it out. Nothing there. What the hell?

We (and by we, I mean he) spent the next bit of time examining boxes for holes or mice, but came up empty. The Squeeze said that if there was still a mouse in the garage, we'd get it that night. We went to bed that night, and I was feeling secure that my worries would end with a spine crushing snap.

The next morning, The Squeeze looked at the traps and found them empty. I was of the belief that maybe the mouse met his end in someone else's garage and hadn't actually been in ours for a while. Maybe that cat that is always roaming around the complex caught it. Good kitty. I'm so sorry I ever considered calling animal control on you.

Then the thought hit me. Oh. My. God. The bags of clothes! The Squeeze had the same thought. He inspected each of the bags for holes, but found nothing suspect. We decided that we were safe, but he stated that if I notice our cat sitting near one of the bags, staring intently at it, we may have a problem.

I awoke Tuesday morning and The Squeeze informed me that two mice had been caught. Deer mice. Brown bodies, white bellies, big brown eyes. It appears that one of them was being eaten by another (I'm hoping it was THE other, and not one of many) after it had been caught in the trap. Apparently, they don't have a taboo about cannibalism. Animals!

"So....we caught two. What does that mean exactly?", I asked.
"Well, some people say where you catch one, there are a hundred more. But that's bullshit. All you can say for sure is where you catch one, you had one...at least."
Very profound.

This morning the traps were empty. We will continue to monitor the situation. And tonight, I continue my search for martini and wine glasses. I'll be kicking all of the boxes in case any of them are housing mice. I hope the box with the glasses is labelled. I'll kick that one softly.