Why do we feel the need to Spring Clean? I think it’s because of the sunshine. When the sun is out and streaming into my house, it illuminates all of the dust and grim and clutter in beams of light. It’s as if God herself is pointing a finger into my home and saying “Look! There! That floor is filthy! Clean! Clean! Clean!”
For me, spring cleaning also means spring purging. All the stuff I’ve horded away over the winter suddenly seems suffocating. I begin stuffing bags with worn coats, scuffed shoes, and discarded toys. I feel the urge to see clean counters and organized closets. I want to be able to walk across my living room bare foot and not yelp with pain from stepping on odds and bits. I want to open my desk drawer and actually find what I need.
What the heck, I might as well hope to win the lottery.
But sometimes, we get a little nudge in the cleaning direction. Mine came in the form of a very small rodent. A small house mouse really.
Kevin keeps the dog food in the garage and when we had the cats that was no problem. After the cats found a new home, the mice moved in big time. Our garage was infested with the critters while they gorged themselves on bags of open dog food. I would find mouse poop all over the place and it was pretty revolting. Kevin and I went on a major cleaning spree last summer sealing up all the dog food and driving the mice back outside. We routed the little buggers out and the whole incident sort of drifted out of my mind.
Then last week, Kevin came in after walking Artie and announced he had another mouse in the garage. I guess he had gotten a little lax on keeping the dog food sealed up and an enterprising mouse had re-discovered the free meal. So we did a quick clean up. But this time, I took it one step further. I had Kevin seal up the crack in the garage door that gave the mice access to the garage. Kevin was a bit doubtful about this move. He didn’t want to come across a bunch of starved mice bodies in the next week but I insisted. So he sealed the crack and, once again, I forgot all about the mouse.
Until.
Well, it turns out, mice are smart little buggers. If you take away their food supply and lock them in the garage, they become hungry and very resourceful. Our little visitor somehow found his way out of the barren garage and into our plentiful pantry. Yes. IN OUR PANTRY.
Can I even describe to you the horror I felt upon pulling out a bag of almonds to find little teeth marks all over the bag? The disgust of finding pellets of mouse poop strew between my cans of soup? The revoltion of detecting the tracks to mice feet in my gnawed through flour bag? No, no I cannot. It was too retching for words.
Now, I knew I was in trouble. If I didn’t catch this mouse and it made its way behind our living room sofa, I was sunk. There are enough goldfish crackers and shriveled grapes behind that sucker to feed a colony of mice for seven years. Seriously. I had to get this mouse now. Now.
And so, last Wed, I found myself slowly removing every item of food from my back pantry. Shrinking every time a can was removed, flinching at the thought to a desperate mouse launching itself at my face, I carefully emptied everything from the pantry and began the disgusting task to cleaning up all the mouse poop. The mouse itself, however, was no where to be seen. This did not deter me. Instead, I proceeded to Home Depot where I purchased four sticky mouse traps. I baited them with some Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat Honey Pretzels, and took a long hot shower with lots and lots of soap.
The next day dawned and I checked for visitors. Sure enough, there he was. A very small, very cute, and very terrified mouse was stuck in the middle of the mouse paper. For a moment, I felt sorry for the little fella. But then I remembered all the food I had trashed and all the poop I had to remove and my heart hardened over.
Our mouse is gone and my pantry is looking mighty fine. What a way to start my annual spring cleaning binge.
