The Story Of How A Massive Swarm Of Rodents Almost Killed Me.

I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this and it’s probably because I mentioned it 16,182 times on Facebook, but I was quoted by Atlantic Monthly.  It’s the first time that a major media outlet has picked up something that I’ve written and referenced it.  Of course, my grandchildren will be so proud to know that the first time I was referenced by a major media outlet, I was talking about Playboy.  But, you know, it was a huge deal to me.  It felt like an accomplishment and it’s been a wonderful weapon that I’ve wielded against my family for the past week.  ”What do you mean, ‘What’s for dinner?’  Don’t you know who I am?  I was quoted in The Atlantic.  I don’t have time to go to the drive-thru.”

And you know, in some ways it doesn’t really feel like my accomplishment.  Yes, this is the part of our visit where I diminish something that brought me joy just 9.2 seconds ago.  Obviously, they picked up the quote because of Evil Beet.  There’s a big audience over there.  Over here, in my little tangerine, SEO nightmare corner of cyberspace I feel very invisible.  I actually get quite a few silent visitors, plus my regulars who support me and advise me … oh, and who are we kidding? — laugh at me.  Totally. Awesome.

What I’m trying to determine is how to develop my site into being something more.  Prettier, more interactive, etc.  I really want a Fairy Webmother to come along, and show me the way.  And by “show me the way” I really mean “do it for me.”  Yes, I’m aware that I whine about this topic at least once a month.  But I can’t eat bread, my kids are in bed fighting about fucking butterflies right now and it’s 9:15 and I’m having popcorn for dinner.  In other words, whining is my very own gluten-free Twinkie.  K?

I took quite a few Thursday and Friday combos off this summer so I could start drinking in the afternoon.  I mean … so I could spend some time with the kids.  It’s good to have the time because it helps me recharge and one of our other writers Molls has been able to pick some hours.  Win-win.  So today I’m checking out Evil Beet — yes, I read EB every day … even on my days off — and there are no new stories up.  And I think to myself, “Man, that Molls has the fucking LA life.  She probably spent the night getting stoned and eating at Yogurtland and having sex with a key grip from the Transformer movies.”  Because isn’t that what people in LA do?  Then, around 3 p.m. she emails me asking me when I’ll be done writing for the day.  This is where you should insert the screeching sound of a needle being dragged across your favorite 33 1/3 vinyl.  WHAAAA?  Yeah, apparently when I said “On Thursday I’ll do 5 and you can do 5″ she thought that meant I was doing 5 and she was doing 5.  Seriously, if my co-workers can’t perceive that “5 and 5″ means “You do 10″ I don’t know how well this is going to work out.  Sigh.  She exercised great restraint in not calling me a fucking asshole (to my face) and between the two of us, we got it all done.  

Have I mentioned how much I hate fucking up?  I take it so personally and it festers in my brain and takes on a life of its own.  Like, I make a mistake and by the time my brain is done digesting, I’m ready for my blindfold and last cigarette.

What else?  Oh, God, how did I forget this?  I have an MRI, A Mouse Related Injury, that is.  Basically, I’ve lost use of my left arm.  Im exaggerating.  So, we have a mouse.  My mother has this penchant for repeating horrible things to me such as, “If you see one mouse, you have three.  If you see two, you have five.”  Mother, seriously, keep your mousematics to yourself.  Not. Helpful.  I went to the hardware store and bought traps.  I’m pretty sure the clerk at True Value thought I was horny because I was doing serious heavy breathing and rotating head circles and groaning, “Oh, God, no, please — stop” at the register.  Just looking at all the traps they offer spiked my anxiety to Tara Reid (high) levels. Incidentally, did you know that they have these very humane mouse traps that catch the rodent but don’t kill?  That way, you can take it outside and set the little infested germ carrier free loose to re-enter your home again?  I DID NOT BUY THOSE.

Even at 37, my mommy had to load the mouse traps.  She set them up with wheat bread — no unhealthy bleached flour for our mice! — and organic peanut butter.  I’m kidding — it was just Skippy — I have my limits.  What the hell?  I feed my mice really well right before I kill them.  I put out little thimbles of port for them too.  We’ve had a stray mouse or two before and I’m very specific on the process of rodent removal.  My mother sets up the trap, I scream hysterically every time I hear a car drive by because I think it’s the sound of a small animal having its neck snapped, and Special K removes all carcasses.  He is not to speak of it, give me any details, or make eye contact with me as he leaves the house to bring IT to its resting place better known as our dumpster.  Upon his return into the house, he must shower with an S.O.S. pad and straight bleach and sleep on the couch until I can be sure that his top layer of dermis has shed.

You know how when someone is sleeping and you are trying really hard to be quiet, by divine law you WILL drop the heaviest book you own onto a hardwood floor?  Or when you play Taboo and you are concentrating so intently on not using the prohibited word “sleepy” to get your teammate to say the winning word “tired ” that you immediately open your mouth and say “sleepy”?  It’s like you focus so much on not doing something that you automatically do it.  That’s how it came to be that I opened the one fucking drawer in the kitchen that held the mousetrap.  And there HE was.  Brown and mangled looking, holding up a sign that read, “I come from a family of thousands.  They will avenge this.”

We live in a small-ish town with a population of about 10,000 people.  It’s not an official census figure, but approximately 7.892 people heard me scream.  Of those 7,892 people that heard me scream, only two never flinched — Devil Dog and Veruca.  I didn’t just scream.  I ran.  I flailed my arms in large circular motions that really should qualify as a week’s quota of cardio.  There was leaping.  In ballet, I believe they call it a “stag leap”.  I stag leaped onto the couch and continued to scream for an extended period of time, burying my face into a pillow because the neighborhood cats were starting to gather ’round to see what was up.  Then came the hyperventilating.  And the shaking.  Wimpering and tears.  My mother — yes, she was there and witnessed all of this — rubbed my back and rolled her eyes (yes I did see that!) and did her best to calm me down.  I mean, she hasn’t had to comfort me like that since Bea Arthur croaked.  It was bad. 

Since my mother is marginally braver than me, she went to survey the crime scene.  I’m not saying that she’d go as far as to draw the chalk line, but she was at least willing to close the drawer for me until Special K got home.  So the Mouse Whisperer herself strode confidently into the kitchen, calmly rolled the drawer shut and came back to resume her back rubbing duties.  She also slipped me an 800mg Ibuprofen.  The drugs were to soothe the pulled muscle clearly torn arm ligament I obtained when the Moby Dick of mice was trying to murder me.  I think my mother was secretly hoping the pill would knock me out — I can be a little draining.  As I swallowed my meds and tried to encourage my blood pressure back into a life-sustaining zone, the Mouse Whisperer herself leaned over and said, “Uh, Wendie?  That wasn’t a mouse you saw.  It was just the bread and peanut butter.”  

I hate mice.  And bread.

Tags: mouse