Little Mice

Usually we like to play rat hockey with the rodents that dare to try to make their home with us. Don’t get me wrong, in America; I am a big fan of hamsters, guinea pigs, mice etc. During my high school days I kept an entire lab of rats, raising them from babies to crawl around my shoulders, passing in and out of my huge loop earrings. But in Bundibugyo, I have declared war on these little and not so little creatures. Perhaps, it is their constant chewing of my Tupperware, or endless black poops in cupboards that I have just scrubbed. Maybe visions of diseases carried in by these once friends. For whatever reason, I have drawn my personal line in the sand. Lizards are welcome, rats are not. They seem to come in waves, invading our house and attempting to set up residence at the most inopportune times. Kevin and I have our strategy down. We dress up in boots and armed with tennis racquets and brooms we do our best to swept out, squash, chase and otherwise rid our house of these unwanted guests. On their part, they dodge, jump, climb walls, hide in the stove, behind the frig or along the bookshelves.

For the last month, I have been noticing that the kids have gotten sloppy in putting away their playmobil toys. Some of the toys weren’t making their way all the way into the basins but were lining the bottom of the toy shelf instead. Most specifically, the little helmets and other accessories that snap on and off of the 2-inch plastic playmobil people. I began to get suspicious when little pieces of feathers and sequins from Louisa’s dress-up clothes also began to appear. Finally an unpleasant odor in the room got me into major cleaning mode. Gross. Under the toy shelf, a massive collection of bits and pieces of bright colored stuff had been assembled. If I had been in a better mood I might have marveled at the sheer amount of the glitz, kind of like a modern piece of art right there in my house. All I could focus on, though, was the tiny nest at my feet. 5 tiny mice babies were huddled inside.

In two seconds, we had gone from Rat Hockey mode to “Aren’t those the cutest things you ever saw?” and “Maybe that’s Ralph S. Mouse’s family!” Joe and Louisa were enthralled, I was partly grossed out (I still had to deal with the smell and general mess) and partly sympathetic, and Kevin was miles away at the National Football Tournament. So for an afternoon the kids played with these little creatures and we spent some serious time on the rat and mice society’s website learning all we could about mice and their young. Later that day we released them into the wild of our back yard. My guess is that they will re-surface in a few months somewhere in the kitchen.