Back in the day I was a big fan of “The Mickey Mouse Club” – I even had my own pair of Mouseketeer ears I donned while watching the show. In later years I never lost my fondness for Mickey and his main squeeze Minnie and I owned several sweatshirts and tees emblazoned with their images. However, I need to set the record straight that “feeling the love” for mice stops right there.

I’ve already relayed the horror story of my rodent issues in a prior blog so I won’t go there now. It both sickened and saddened me to see a rat infestation in my garden paradise, and, though I may never see another rat in the yard, the experience has tainted me forever.

Thus, with the exception of Mickey and Minnie, I detest rodents. To me, mice are mini versions of rats. Of course, there has always been the occasional field mouse lurking about outside, especially since I fed the birds for decades. I’d see them scurrying to and fro, nibbling on the spilled birdseed, or trying to snatch a stale bread crust which I tossed to the birds. I always worry they’ll follow me into the house, especially when the cooler temps arrive.

This morning at Council Point Park, I was walking along minding my own business when a mouse came running out of the bush and missed my feet by a hair’s breadth. Whoa! This was way too close for comfort! I suspect that a bigger critter was chasing him and he didn’t even see me comin’. He momentarily startled me and I screamed. I was in a somewhat secluded part of the Park with no one near me, but I am sure every walker’s head swiveled around to see what the commotion was about. One or two people crossed my path before I left the Park and asked if I heard a woman’s scream and I was somewhat red faced when I answered “yes, I heard that woman scream … it was me; this five-foot, nine-inch person who had a three-inch mouse cross her path” … then with a wan smile I said “I’m really scared of anything that moves faster than I do” which garnered a few laughs as if I was trying to be a stand-up comedian. The old adage of “he’s more scared of you, then you are of him” is a misnomer.

The rest of the walk was spent studying every part of the path in front of me– I really must shake this terror as I enjoy my morning walk in the Park too much to stop now due to a silly old mouse. I tried to recall that cutesy rhyme our grade school teacher had us recite just to pacify myself and get past the incident. I Googled it when I came online later to read the entire poem. I’ll bet if you reach into the recesses of your brain, you will recall it too.

I think mice
Are rather nice.
Their tails are long,
Their faces small,
They haven’t any
Chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
Their teeth are white.
They run about the house at night
They nibble things they shouldn’t touch,
And no one seems to like them much
But I think mice are nice.

My high school chum and Facebook friend, Carol, lives in Honeoye Falls, a tiny rural village in New York. Her house butts up against a wooded area. She regales us daily with posts telling tales of deer and fox visiting her backyard, beautiful birds sipping and supping at her birdbath and feeder respectively, and gorgeous and unusual butterflies and moths native to that area flitting about her gardens. She usually substantiates her nature posts with pictures. Carol likes to sit on her deck at night and watch the bats. While I enjoy reading about her wildlife encounters and have suggested she compile her posts and write a narrative entitled “Tales From The Edge”, she laughs it off and says she is just a city girl captivated by the great outdoors. Well, I love animals just as much as the next person, but I’d be wary of deer or fox in my backyard and no way would I feel comfortable in the dark with bats flying around. I’ve told her so. When I had my rodent issue a few years ago, Carol offered to box up and send some “animal friendly” traps so I could capture the rats and set them free. Trap the rats? Pick up the trap and carry it somewhere with that little varmint inside and let it loose? Not a chance! I politely declined.

Living so close to the woods, Carol often mentions being plagued by voles. Not wishing to appear out of the loop as to the woodland dwellers, I Googled “vole”, took a peek and then asked her “what the heck is a vole versus a mouse?” “Just a chubby version of a regular mouse” she replied and added that they live in the shed where she keeps her riding mower and they won’t hurt you. I shuddered when I read that as I recalled the debacle with my garage mouse.

Years ago I found a pile of sawdust and gnaw marks on a fiberboard storage cupboard in my garage. I sprinkled some turquoise D-con mouse pellets, then prayed they’d eat it and go somewhere else to die. Well, no … one tiny mouse body was laying there the next time I went out. Sigh. I went to ACO Hardware for more mouse repellent and spied a glue mousetrap which touted the product was the most-humane way to dispose of unwanted vermin (as if there are “wanted vermin”?). I put the trap out in the garage and a few days later went out to go somewhere in the car. I backed the car out and when I went to close the garage door, there he was – this pitiful little mouse looking at me, its hind end submerged in the glue and its little body squirming and writhing to get out of the sticky trap. With eyes filled with tears at what I’d done, I ran over to my neighbor Marge’s house and asked her to pick it up and take it away. Being the solid friend that she is, she hustled over, picked up the contraption with a plastic bag, sealed the bag to quickly suffocate the mouse, and threw it into her yard waste bag. The next time she opened the yard waste bag our little friend scampered out of the bag and leapt onto the grass and ran away. Whew! That was the first and last time to use the glue method – certainly not humane, even if he did manage to get free.

As to rodents and creepy crawlies I try to put on my “big-girl pants” and deal with it … but I surely shaved another year off my life with this morning “MOUSESCAPADE”.

p.s. I went over the 200-mile mark today … now to shoot for 300 miles and supersede the car mileage.