#279 Louses and Mouses

So you have your louse and you have your lice. You have your mouse and you have your mice. When you have a big hairy and ugly mouse you call it a rat but when you have a big and ugly louse you don’t call it a lat. Fortunately, I live far enough from the city never to have a problem with rats. But I live close enough to the country to occasionally be bothered with field mice. Field mice. It sounds like some kind of migrant laborer type of mice doesn’t it. Or perhaps some hired hand from the dust bowl. Yep, looks like we’re gonna have a good harvest this year, better call in the field mice.
Actually, they can have their fields. It’s when they try to become house mouses that I get concerned. Not that it wouldn’t be helpful to have another shorter and smaller species around to nibble away the accumulated crumbs under the kitchen counter. But their little feces are a nuisance, especially when they put a nest together in the closet wall and all my garments reek of urea. That ammonia-like odor gets me smelling just the opposite of Mr. Clean.
So the other night a field mouse blundered into our house. I caught him out of the corner of my eye, skittering across the hardwood floor and ducking behind the trashcan. We gave chase. Now my wife is not a hunter by nature. Nor am I, for that matter, but I condition myself for the inevitable painful demise of da’ mice by using the simple psychological expedient of calling them rats. “There’s a rat in the house,” I exclaimed, and we all jumped up and assumed our human defense-against-intruder positions. My wife grabbed a broom, I opted for the carving knife, and my daughter stood on her tiptoes and put her hands over her eyes. The mouse-rat broke from cover and dashed to the living room. “The rat!” I shouted, somewhat superfluously. “Mouse,” said my wife, “It’s not a rat.” Oh no, she was already melting. Visions of Mickey and Minnie and Fievel danced in her nurturing imagination. I ran into the living room, knife brandished high. She yelled for my daughter to open the front door and headed me off, trying to broom the rat into the outside. The rat refused to cooperate, instead bolting for the safety of the family room. As the family was now in the living room, I had a brief moment of disorientation. Cut to the chase, or at least the end thereof. We lost. The rat found some crack or cranny and managed to hide himself. My wife held on to the fond hope that the mouse had escaped outside while my daughter held open the door. I asserted that in the process she had likely let more rats in. And the reason we had a rat in our house in the first place was because someone had left the door open earlier. “I’ll set a rat trap,” I said. My wife cringed in horror. Fievel again. He’s ruining or marriage. “Don’t worry,” I lied whitely, “I’ll set it for stun.”
America, ya gotta love it.