The Year of the Mice
2016…The year of the mice. The first mouse siting was during a sleepover in a room full of teenage girls. My daughter and her group of friends were settling in to watch a movie when a mouse emerged from beneath the couch and raced across the hard wood floor, through the maze of pillows, blankets and couch cushions. That was the end of sleeping on the floor.
After that night, my kids were constantly on the look out for mice. Their eyes and ears were on alert day and night. We began finding mouse droppings around the kitchen and behind the couch. The mice multiplied quickly and we started seeing them in every room of the house. One night we had an unexpected guest who needed a place to spend the night. As I brought them to their bed, a mouse ran across the floor. After that, I stopped inviting people over.
We tried every kind of trap imaginable, deep cleaning the house, and two different pest control companies. The mice completely ignored the traps. I began to feel a bit crazy. I had trouble sleeping and jumped at the chance to leave the house on weekends.
We went on vacation in the summer of 2016 for a week and gladly left the mice behind. When we returned, there were mouse droppings in our beds. That was the last straw!
I started dreading the night. The sun setting meant the mice would come out to play. I turned on loud music and entered empty rooms with my eyes closed yelling, “get out of here, mice!”
We started to recognize the paths that the mice traveled. The majority of activity was in and around the living room couch. As a last resort, we decided to get rid of the couch. Mark brought it out into the country and my brother in-law and father in-law joined in a couch burning party.
After the couch was gone, the mice slowly disappeared. They were gone for about a year, but then came back in 2018.
One night, I opened the bedroom door to come downstairs during the early morning hours and saw two baby mice about an inch long toppling down the stairs. Seeing babies made me think, “Oh no, they’re multiplying!” Pest control came right away and told us that when you see babies, usually it means the adult mice are dead. The babies only leave the nest as a last resort. Those babies were the last mice I have seen.
The only evidence of the mice that remains is a piece of black tape covering the door to the upstairs attic. I convinced myself that the baby mice had come from the attic and taping the door was my desperate attempt of keeping the mice in.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how this image parallels many areas of life. How often do I close the door to certain areas of my heart and emotions that I don’t want to deal with? “I’ll take care of it later,” I think to myself.
Unfortunately, a conflict or painful memory can only be avoided for so long. Last week, I finally took the tape off the door. There was no sign of mice. Just old papers, musty blankets, suitcases, and trash.
The mice are gone now, but the life lessons they taught me still remain. Our thoughts are trained to run in the same patterns, just like mice do. We can look the other way and hope that our hidden thoughts will somehow go away, but usually they need some gentle, yet firm attention. The pest control company we called didn’t seem to be helping for many months. Sometimes, the friend or therapist that we choose doesn’t end up being helpful or it takes longer than we expected. We had mice for over a year and there were days when I just wanted to move out and quit trying.
I am working hard to move toward the hard conversations with others instead of avoiding them. Facing fears and recognizing unhelpful beliefs that I have allowed to rule my life is hard, but important work. I hope you will have courage to face your fears as well. You are stronger than you know.
And now, one last thing, dear reader: If you currently have mice running wild throughout your house, tell me your mice stories and my empathy will abound!