Okay, I've got one. Fair warning, it is long.
First, you need to understand that I grew up as rural as rural gets. When I say I grew up in the woods, I mean that I was part of an enclave consisting of a handful of homes literally surrounded by national forest with only two dirt roads out. We never really had any kind of pest problem because snakes and birds of prey (and a barnyard cat or two, batting cleanup) typically took care of it sight unseen, with the only the occasional owl pellet in science class as a reminder that there were even rodents in Florida.
After college I got my first "real" job in Dothan, AL and found my first house a bit north of there. It was a nice little raised foundation home on a packed clay road bordered by peanut fields to the north as far as you could see. This view was only interrupted by the trees forming the windbreaks in the distance. The house itself had nice high ceilings, a porch that wrapped around the front and side and another smaller covered porch- only big enough for a couple of chairs - out the back door towards the fields. It is this smaller porch that will feature prominently in our story. South of the house there was a small grove of large mature pecan trees. There were a couple of these trees in the yard as well. The house sat on roughly 2 acres and we had a neighbor whose property adjoined ours, but other than that we had this entire area to ourselves. It was a quiet place to raise some kids. Early on the only issues were that our neighbors were Jehovah's Witnesses that occasionally burned trashed. Each of those facts is separately and tangentially related to stories for another time.
So here I am, in my first real home with a young wife, a good job, in a beautiful spot with the early days of fall ending in cool dark nights. It was a veritable paradise on Earth - and that is when I met my first mouse.
He was a shifty-looking, furry fellow with beady black eyes and small frame all of about three inches. The annunciation of his arrival was a cacophonous symphony which commenced with a primal scream and quickly crescendoed into hastily composed prayers of imprecation and the metallic pinging of hurtling flatware and concluded with headlong exodus of my bride from the kitchen into the living room. It was here that she lept up onto our newly purchased Rooms to Go ottoman and began to pump her legs with a fury that would have shamed Richard Simmons while screaming "there's a rat in the kitchen!!" repeatedly like it was some kind of incantation in a pagan exorcism ritual.
Now, as I previously mentioned I had never tangled with a mouse before, but I had dispatched more than my share of armadillos and raccoons who were intent on digging up gardens and rummaging in trash respectively. How hard could it be to get rid of a mouse? Brimming with confidence and the swagger of John Wayne I strode towards the kitchen, looking back over my shoulder, giving her a wink while letting my mind wander to the rock star reception I was sure awaited me for removing the interloping rodent.
I came face to face with my foe in the kitchen. He was brazenly gnawing on a piece of corn that had been intended for a side dish at dinner that night. We locked eyes and he twitched his whiskers, no doubt considering what my next move would be. I realized that in my haste I was unarmed and had no way to mete out the mousey justice needed, so I scanned the room and selected the no stick frying pan that had been a wedding gift. Silently as death, I slide my hand around the handle and began to roll heel toe slowly towards the rodent. He made no attempt to retreat. Once within reach I slowly raised the pan over my head and then brought it swiftly down for the killing blow.
With lightning quickness the lesser mammal darted out of the path of the killshot. The next moments were a flurry of activity. Bellowing in rage and bloodlust, I launched several enormous T-Fal haymakers in his direction – each with no effect other than successive dents on the floor and cabinets. Apparently believing I would eventually get lucky, he decided a tactical withdraw was in order and deftly passed through a barely perceivable crack under the baseboard. The wife was less than impressed.
Growing up I learned from my father that the two most important items in any home maintenance arsenal are a hammer and caulk. While on this occasion the latter seemed like the appropriate remedy I quieted my inner frustration by promising it that I would exact vengeance with the former if possible. The confidence I feigned in my repair did not inspire the same in the lady of the house. The next night proved she was correct.
My nemesis was back the second night, this time bringing a friend. Perhaps the promise was “dinner and show” or whatever the rodent equivalent might be. The irritation in Mrs Five-Star was evident. Words were used like “overrun” “diseased” “vermin” and “plague” that left little doubt the stakes in the war were rapidly escalating. At first I suggested poison. This idea was quickly shot down because she had read in a magazine that it was dangerous to expose pregnant women or women who expected to be pregnant to rat poisoning. Earth shattering research there. There was a wife veto; poison would be a no-go. So I went to see Charlie, a friend from church who owned the local hardware store.
Charlie was as Alabama as it gets. He was nearly as wide as he was tall and the alternating tan lines on his face from his nearly-ever present ball cap and Dale Earnhardt-esk sun glasses gave his rounded head an appearance that always vaguely reminded me of an ABA basketball. He was “good people” as my grandmother used to say and was only too happy to help me end the War of the Rodents. He sold me several spring traps at a fair price and recommended peanut butter as bait. It’s hard to quantify the dark satisfaction that crept over me as I bounced down the washboard clay. I set the traps and went to bed with smug certainty.
The next morning I woke up with devilish excitement of a grim Christmas. My wife got out the bedroom door first in the predawn dark and I heard a gasp right after the sound of the kitchen light switch clicking. Bingo. I strutted out of the bedroom, through the dining room and into the kitchen to perform the battle damage assessment. Only one of the traps was sprung but had done its work masterfully. The bar had come down on the invader’s head and ejected his cranial contents through his ear at high velocity onto the nearby wall. Confirmed kill.
My turn towards my wife was smart and I had nearly begun to raise my hand for a high five, when her eyes met mine and they were filled with tears. Now is a good time to note that Mrs. Five-Star’s upbringing was somewhat more refined than mine and distinctly not rural. The death of varmints was as alien to her as cucumber sandwiches were to me. There had already been an empathic explanation that a back porch was not the place to mount a board to nail catfish to for the purpose of easy cleaning. My defense of “I used a wash tub underneath” had done nothing to allay her angst about that matter; and it was now apparent that a grave miscalculation had occurred in this one as well.
Her remorse was puzzling to say the least because just a couple of days prior she had attempted assassination personally by way of high velocity butter knife. Nevertheless, I loved this woman and did the best to comfort her despite my own confusion. I removed the carcass and cleaned the wall and decided to try to achieve a new consensus on a plan of action. Her request was for something more humane. No matter how hard I tried to express that the mouse probably didn’t feel anything, she wasn’t having it. She wanted something more humane; maybe a way to catch them and let them go far out in the field. So I went back to Charlie.
Here is where the story takes its tragic turn; as I was rather imprecise in my specifications to Charlie about the fault in the methodology of elimination. I simply told him my wife didn’t like the traps and wanted to catch them rather than squash them. Charlie’s response of “all I have are glue traps” at the time sounded like response to earnest prayers. It was perfect. A sticky trap that catches the mouse which I can then spirit off according to the wishes of the Mrs and release so he can be free. I baited the glue traps with peanut butter and sat down with the Mrs to watch a movie before bed. The frantic squeaking started just as she was starting to dose off next to me.
When we went into the kitchen, there, in the dead center of the trap was a mouse stuck in the glue squealing loudly. The Mrs beemed. “Okay, now let him go,” she said. I walked over and picked up the trap and immediately realized this had gone horribly wrong. Now as those of you who have been chortling since the last paragraph know, glue traps are about as far from catch and release as it gets. What greeted me was a terrified creature hopeless stuck in glue that had instantly bonded with its fur. It got even more scared when I got close and began to struggle. I did my best to try to turn my body to shield the lady from the scene but she was peeking around my shoulder when it its struggle it pulled its own ear off. It went downhill from there. She began to sob. “Help it, help it!” she was instantly shrieking. This off course did nothing to calm the rodent’s demeanor. “Use a butter knife!” she yelled, with no further direction. (I would come to realize later that for those of the fairer sex with a refined upbringing a butter knife is the tool of choice much like a hammer is to a man from the sticks. This was why it was her go to offensive weapon in the earlier encounter. ) I tried to follow this instruction by attempting to use it as a lever to free the doomed mouse. The results were what you might expect. Realizing that the only realistic option was to end the animal’s suffering and also realizing that if I did this in front of my wife she would probably never speak to me again I told a white lie. “I’m going to go outside to help it calm down,” I said, “when it isn’t struggling I’ll be able to get it out and let it go.” I promised myself I would tell her the truth later – but right now it would be unhelpful. So I kissed her on the forehead, turned on the porch light and headed out the back door.
The night was moonless and overcast. To those of you who have never lived in a rural setting it was a night my dad would describe as “darker than a miner’s *******.” Pitch black. The brightest light for miles was the little glowing orb of light coming from my back porch and it barely head the dark back. I picked up a brick that I used to prop the door open in nice weather and resolved to walk far enough into the black where there was no chance she would see what needed to be done. The mouse’s cries had become soft whimpers and I was attempting to make good speed across the yard to put it down quickly.
I was just getting to where the porch light was barely a pinprick and I was certain she couldn’t possible see when the mouse started going nuts. WHOOSH. Something in my hair. My brain reeled. WHOOSH something huge right by my neck. Here in the dark – I was under attack by something unseen and massive. Blind panic. Deep down in my lizard brain the message for my feet to run was engaged with my brain still in neutral. “Open the door!” I yelled “Something is after me!” I barreled as across the yard – mouse screaming and the huge unseen thing grasping at me over and over. In a full panic mode I got up the steps and grasped for the door. LOCKED. Cold dread washed over me. That’s when it appeared out of the darkness, coming into the orb of light underneath the roof of the back porch. Claws. At least that is what I saw. Huge, claws. Open and pointy.
I know it is a movie trope that everything goes to slow motion, but I swear that even though it was over in seconds the rest of this at the time seemed to stretch out forever. Into the light behind those massive talons roared in an enormous hawk. To this day I’m not sure who was more surprised to see who, but the result was the same for both parties. The next few second degenerated to a knife fight in a phone booth. This bird (although my brain at the time hadn’t registered it as such) despite his best “oh ****” effort to stop hit me square in the solar plexus, sending me back hard into the door. Instinctively I began wildly flailing with both the brick hand and the mouse hand at this as yet unidentified threat. The bird for his part bounced off of me and tried to fly up and away, but in his own panic hit the ceiling with a thud and sputtering to the floor in a rain of feathers. As he did he let out a loud screech that did little to calm the situation. Likewise in the midst of my flailing the brick hand shattered the light plunging both parties into to confused and panicked darkness. I tried to back away still flailing and hit the guardrail so hard it partially gave way and sent me heels over ass off the side of the porch. I landed on the mouse (thankfully sunny side down) and had the front of my head collide with the corner of the brick I was holding. With the wind knocked out of me and my bell rung I had no choice but to lay there and allow my thoughts to final collect.
Once I had finally pieced together what had happened I noticed that there was not a small amount of blood coming out of a scalp wound. I picked myself up wincing – but fortunately other than some bruises and that cut I was no worse for wear. Gathering the shards of my dignity I walked up the back steps and calmly knocked on the door. “Honey, please let me in – I’m hurt.” No answer. “Hey, I’ve got a nasty cut and you’ve locked the door – can you open the door?” No answer. I walked around to the front porch and knocked. Still no answer. Finally I walk to the bedroom window. “Please open up, I’m cut up and tired.” Finally the blinds crack and flash light shines in my eyes. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?” she says. I just stared at her in stunned silence for a moment. The flashlight goes out and I hear the front door unlocked. I walk in and she is standing there holding the bat I kept by the bedroom door in those days. “Why did you lock me out, I was calling for help?” Fair question. “You said something was after you and I was scared so I locked the door and hid.” Love you too babe, love you too…