When mice and bats took over our temporary home

Not too many years ago, Taller Half and I moved into a new place. It was only a temporary house we rented while our dream house was being built. It was a nice, comfortable place, and we enjoyed living there at first.

Things changed when we discovered we were sharing that house with a mouse. Turns out it wasn’t just one mouse; it was a whole mouse family.

At the beginning of our cohabitation with the mouse family, everything was just fine. We rarely even saw them. Then things changed.

Perhaps those mice were curious about us, but we would see them running away whenever someone entered a room. Then suddenly there were mouse droppings to clean up. Taller Half called our landlord about our problem, and soon there were traps set in every room.

Whenever a mouse got caught in a trap, it would squeak and cry until a human felt pity and turned it loose. That was such a stupid thing to do. In no time at all, we had several mice in our house.

Once, I walked into the kitchen one morning to get some coffee and saw a mouse on the counter studying the coffee maker. When I screamed, that mouse took off. That was enough. I told Taller Half, either we went or the mice went. So the traps were set, and soon those traps were full of mice.

House mice are not pets, I told our children when they cried and begged to keep the mice. No, we told them the mice were going to live outside in the woods, which they did, though I did suspect our children took food out to them rather frequently. Mice are cute, little creatures, but not when they live in your house.

Our house was much happier when the mice were gone, as was I. But soon Taller Half told me he suspected we might have bats in our attic. Now how would bats get into our attic? No questions, those creatures had to go.

Taller Half set up a trap to catch those scary, winged things, but no matter how hard he tried, those bats avoided capture. Then I got an idea.

One afternoon I went into the attic and opened a window. Just before nightfall, those bats flew right out the window, and I ran and closed that window. I called Taller Half and told him the bats were gone. With both the mice and bats gone, we felt we should celebrate. Right as we were getting cookies and candy spread out on the table, our youngest child came running inside holding two small mice, followed by his sister holding two more little mice.

I screamed at both kids not to put those mice down. They did and rushed into the kitchen to find mouse food. They were both followed by two black flying objects. Our children were happy; those creatures were happy. Taller Half and I made plans to go house hunting the next day. And we did.

Laura Moore can be emailed at lehmoore1@gmail.com.