It’s been a while since I’ve had any rodents in my house, or at least any that brought themselves to my attention. If there’s a mouse in the house and you don’t see it, is it really there?

Well, it was really there tonight as I lay sprawled on my sofa watching the Downton Abbey movie. My dog, Duke, was lying next to me when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement on the rug. The movement turned out to be a tiny little mouse running across the room. Duke didn’t even stir. I, on the other hand, jumped up and chased the mouse until he escaped under the radiator.

I had some mousetraps in the house, so I lathered them with peanut butter and set them under the radiators. My dog and I settled back down to continue watching the movie, when movement again caught my eye. The mouse was a daredevil, for sure. It ran right past Duke, who didn’t even look up. I grabbed a Solo cup and chased the mouse into a corner. Then I scooped him up (after several tries and a lot of mouse squealing) and took him to the backyard.

My mother always said, “If there’s one mouse, there are always more.” It didn’t take long to prove her right. After I congratulated myself on my heroic capture of an animal the size of my thumb, my dog started sniffing around the stove. The last time one of my dogs did that, we wound up moving into a hotel. So, of course, I expected the worst. I was not disappointed.

I pulled out the bottom drawer of the stove to see if anything was underneath it, and at first, it was all clear. And then I saw what looked like a shadow dash by the baseboard. Years ago, there was a hole in the wall behind the stove from which a rat entered and set up housekeeping. We had long ago sealed that hole, but that was the direction the shadow ran towards.

Of course it was after midnight. It’s always the middle of the night when I discover unpleasant things. I think I’ll start going to bed earlier.

Since I didn’t feel like fighting rodents in the wee hours, I put a mouse trap under the stove and went upstairs. Tomorrow seems soon enough to deal with whatever is back there. All I hope is that the mouse, or mice, stays behind the stove and doesn’t venture upstairs to my bedroom. My mother also always said, “Mice are tricky. They can flatten themselves and slide through the tiniest cracks,” so I stuffed towels under the door.

I also barricaded the door with heavy furniture, which might have been taking things a bit far. My mother never said mice could move furniture, so as long as the cracks under the door are stuffed, I should be fine (knock wood).

Except for my dreams. I’m not looking forward to them. Maybe I’ll just stay up.

Addendum (added 4/29/2022)

My parents had a pantry in the basement when I lived in Ohio as a teen. The pantry consisted of long shelves that ran the length of one wall. One half of the shelving was for food and the other was for toys. One day, my mother noticed a Cheerio next to a dollhouse. She investigated further and discovered that every room in the dollhouse was filled to its ceiling with Cheerios. “We have mice in the basement,” my mother announced at dinner. She described what she had found. I commented that it must’ve taken the mice forever to carry the Cheerios, one by one, across the shelving to the dollhouse and then to fill the rooms. Her response was, “They had the time.”