Kill the Mice!

I've probably sounded a little too much like William Golding's fabricated representation of evil lately...good old Jack in Lord of the Flies.

Instead of walking through the house yelling, "Kill the Beast," I've been mumbling every time I pass a certain corner, "Kill the Mice!" *This blog is not for the animal rights activist or for those fighting for the rights of mice (good book title by the way...maybe too much like Of Mice and Men)...Anyway...


This is the second time this winter that a mouse (I'm convinced the animal is much closer to an elk or moose, the way its fumes smack you down) has crawled into a sacred place behind our wall and died. And as I'm sure you know, where there's one mouse...there's an army of mice. Good times!

I'm now going to use this story to give you a perfect example of how my husband and I differ in how we handle conflict.

I, as stated before, grumble around the house declaring a mass execution of the little critters, while my husband wants to "wait it out." Is that like smoke it out with no smoke? What? Wait what out, the smell? He actually said that the smell will begin to dissipate once "the juices dry up." Really hope none of you are eating as you read this.

So there you have it...I want action and I want it now. My husband with his unbelievable gift of patience wants to wait...This is exactly how we deal with conflict in our lives. I want things solved--a pretty little bow. He's willing to work on the puzzle for months or years if that's what it takes. So, who's right you wonder? Well the fair thing to say would be...we both are. I'm going to argue that we are both wrong. How constructive.

In other words, as I'm in the upstairs bathroom paranoid that one Pied Piper mouse led his friends up there to die, my husband insists one or two traps is enough to rid the house of the mutant rodents--we are somehow not coming together on this.

I'm not suggesting we need to nuke the place to rid it of all the decomposing mice and I'm also not so sure we need to sit around buying extra candles to mask the smell of the "juices."

What's the happy medium? Haven't found it yet...but I won't quit now.

Still, in the quiet moments when all the children are tucked into bed and my husband is caught up watching a basketball game on TV, it takes everything in me not to burst out and yell with the vocals of a prepubescent boy on an island with no adults, "Kill the mice!"

Home Life:

• If I had a dollar for every itty bitty toy part I just found in the dog's poop outside, well...I'd probably have enough money to buy back those toys in their original form.
• I really need to find a way to get the dog to stop eating the toddler's food and the toddler to stop eating the dog's food.

Merry conflict resolution and mice-catching to you!