Saving the World and other 21th Century Dilemmas

I am going to start living in an alternate universe of my own making. Yup, screw the fact that nuclear annihilation is a real possibility and that my schnauzer would make a better statesman than some of those running the world. Screw the fact that sexual predators are coming out of the woodwork and that some people are using the story of the Virgin Mary and Joseph in an attempt to normalize pedophilia. I’m designating my worrying time, my advocacy time, my resistance time and my time to help save the world to the weekends and during the week I’m going to play hooky from reality. No more going to the grocery store, for example, and peering into my cart to discover that it looks like I’m stocking a new-age ark. Two bags of ethically sourced coffee, two cartons of Liberte` organic yogurt, two boxes of bio-degradable trash bags and how did those two bars of Endangered Species Dark Chocolate get into my cart? I can’t even shop without trying to save the world! 

And can we all agree that I’m not in charge of other people’s conscience? Like at the grocery store when a guy in his thirties and I were both putting groceries in our vehicles---mine in environmentally friendly cloth bags, his in plastic. When it came time to walk our carts to the cart corral he watched me go and I could see the electrodes in his brain firing back and forth, one side telling him he should follow my lead and the other side was telling him, “Screw doing the right thing!” He took his empty cart and parked it on the other side of his truck where it was temporarily out of my sight. Until he drove away. That was funny all by itself, but it was even funnier when paired with the fact that I had debated with myself about taking a thirty foot detour and offering to take his cart along with mine but the selfish side of my brain spoke up and said: I’m more than twice his age. He should be offering to take my cart! Gosh, was that the start of my alternate universe where every man is out for himself? It was Friday so I was okay. In my new universe I only have to care about being nice and socially responsible on the weekends. 

Speaking of grocery stores---again---my favorite one spent the entire summer remodeling. They got new flooring, shelving, lighting, bathrooms, checkout stands and carts plus freshly painted ceilings and walls and they moved entire departments clear to the other side of their store. The parking lot covers 10 acres and it had 25+ semi-trailers lined up for the work crews. Shopping in that 250,000 square foot store during construction was like going on a scavenger hunt. But every month they sent me coupons for free stuff that I usually buy in the brands I like so it was like getting paid ten bucks a week to continue shopping there. The biggest change is they nearly doubled the beer and wine department. It was already pretty big so what does that say about our society? It says they quit stocking Hershey’s syrup in cans and other old school stuff to make room for people to have more choices for getting drunk! I’m in mourning over that. I have a can in the refrigerator and when it’s empty I’m washing it out and keeping it. Hershey syrup in cans have been in my life since I was born so I’m hoarding that last can for my nieces to throw out when I die. 

I’ve also been trying to buy d-CON to feed the mice who like to winter over in my basement. The shelf at the grocery store where it’s supposed to be was empty three weeks in a row. I went to Lowe’s and found the same thing there. Time to order it from Amazon, I thought. Wrong. Every Amazon.com vendor, in every size bag of d-CON I tried to buy, said they were temporary out of stock. Mice are going to rule the world! What’s going on? Google had the answer: “The 12 d-CON products being canceled do not meet EPA’s current safety standards. All 12 of the products are sold without a protective bait station. Bait stations are required for consumer products to protect children and pets from contact with bait pellets.” Oh. My. God! I need to find a black market source for outlawed d-CON! I refuse to use those sticky, mouse pad thingies. They look like cruel and unusual punishment for just wanting to live in a nice house. And the spring-style traps? In my neighborhood the mice have figured out how to out-smart them.

After my unsuccessful trip to Amazon I went to a mama/papa hardware store known for still having stock on their shelves from the last century and I bought the last bag of off-brand mice blocks they had. I felt sleazy, like I should have been wearing dark glasses to fool the satellite imaging that was no doubt tracking my illegal purchase. But I was doing it during the week, keeping my commitment to myself to only try to save the world on the weekends. So all is well and good in my new alternate universe. Hey, I wonder if that hardware store has any cans of Hershey’s syrup! ©

A Mouse in the House

`Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not ever a mouse. Nope, I caught the little sucker and I didn’t even need to rent that flame thrower I was vowing to do. It’s been decades since I’ve had a mouse in the house and when I went to the store to buy me some traps I could only marvel at the new invention d-CON had come up with. Bait it from the bottom, turn the dial and in theory the mouse goes in the side door, it slams shut behind him and you never have to see the little squatter again.

A few hours after setting it, I heard a clicking sound come from the trap. Sure enough the red mark had moved indicating that a mouse was shut inside. But worry wart that I am I got to wondering if maybe a vibration could have caused the trap to spring and it was mouseless inside. I was wishing there’d been a window where I could see the little varmint mouthing the words, “Help me!” So I got out my postal scale and weighed a trap I hadn’t set yet, then I weighed the other. Sure enough it registered just under an ounce difference. But wait! That was on the heavy side for a mouse according to the internet. Oh, my God, I’d probably killed an expectant mother and broke up a family just before the holidays! In case I was right, I set the second trap where the first one had been thinking if there a daddy widower mouse was wandering around I’d see to it that they got buried together in the same batch of trash. It’s the least I could do.

When I was growing up my folks had a summer cottage and it wasn’t unusual to find mice when we cleaning it out in the spring. My first memory of seeing a mother mouse with a litter of nursing babies was a teachable moment for my mom. The nest we’d found was in a dresser drawer and the panic-stricken mother mouse was so devoted to her family that she didn’t even try to run away when she saw three pairs of eyes starring down at her. My mother, though, didn’t have the heart to kill them. No, she told us kids to take that drawer out to the woods and find a safe place to transfer that nest. “All baby creatures deserve a chance to grow up,” she said. Over the years there were other nests with babies that got transferred to the woods and there were many more adult mice who died by d-CON. But of all the memories of have of my mother, one of my favorites is of her chasing mice around with her trusty, mouse killing broom.

When Don and I first met he had a cracker box of a house that was so “porous” there were tons of places mice could walk right in and hang up their Home-Sweet-Home signs. He was brought up on a farm and barn mice, to him, were no big deal. I’d tell him, “Don, you need to get some d-CON. You’ve got mice in your house” and he’d say, “They don’t eat much.” This went on for a few weeks until one day when he was lying on the floor reading the newspaper and he finally decided it was time to declare war on the mice. Two of them chasing each other had run right up his pant leg! His cat, seeing them go up was determined they weren’t coming back out the same way they’d gone in. It was off to the hardware store within minutes of stripping off his pants and Don set up a trap line that would have made Grizzly Adams proud.

Another memory my mouse-in-the-house triggered is one of an old bachelor Don knew from work. He lived on a farm that he’d inherited from his folks and he was a postcard collector. At the time I was trying to build a set of woman’s suffrage cards and had been at it for several years. I had just one card left to complete the series and Don’s work friend claimed to have several of them. He wouldn’t sell one, he said, but he’d let us come look at his 1909 Dunston Wellers.

This guy turned out to be a hoarder---but a hoarder with a purpose to his madness. Every room in that old Victorian farm house was filled with filing cabinet after filing cabinet full of postcards. In many places you had to turn sideways to pass through but sure enough, he had a whole drawer full of the exact, elusive card  I needed and lusted after. At the time they were valued at upwards of $100.00, but even the offer of $200.00 wouldn’t get that guy to sell us one. After the haggling ended unsuccessfully he invited us into the kitchen for coffee. Oh, crap! And I’m not cursing; it’s a statement about what we saw. There was mouse droppings every where and it was thick from lord knows how many months/years of build up. Mice were running back and forth on the counter top and when the guy saw me watching the mice he said, “Oh, don’t mind them,” and he pointed to a white sheet of 8” x 10” paper, adding, “as long as they leave that place for me to eat on, they can have the rest.”

I woke up this morning with a start. I’d been dreaming about a mouse that had moved a baby Jesus out of a manager in nativity set and was giving birth in it with a bunch of plastic animals watching. The first thing I did when I was fully awake was check the second trap that I’d set last night and I was ever so grateful to find it empty. ©