Not a Creature Was Stirring
As you may know by now, we’ve had a mouse problem—the problem being that innumerable mice are living in our basement and eating all our food, and they don’t even have the decency to pay rent.
(This is a Christmas post, I promise. Stay with me.)
Ever since our best possum friend Patches abandoned us for the open road and set off to find his possum destiny, that mouse problem has slowly worsened. We’ve had to find creative ways to address the issue.
At first, I tried to be diplomatic.
When my friendly notice proved inexplicably ineffective, I cleared out the pantry entirely and stashed all our tempting noodles and crackers and flours and things in plastic bins. I cleaned out the mouse droppings, sanitized it all, and then we set The Traps.
What we use as a pantry in our c. 1812 house was once a set of stairs that led to a small bedroom above the kitchen. Nothing about our house is particularly well insulated, and with feral cats roaming freely around the town, this place is a winter haven for rodents of all sorts.
With so many possible entrance points, our best option was to lay down a barrage, a relentless siege to starve the enemy out of their holes and into our clutches. We learned, and we adjusted, and we gained ground. Guilt burrowed inside me with each snap of a trap, but then I’d try to cook a meal with all our dry goods scattered across four heavy boxes, and my resolve would strengthen. But our efforts did little good, anyway: the vermin were too light and quick. Most mornings we woke to still-armed traps licked clean of peanut butter.
“ARE THEY TINY MAGICIANS?” I’d shout in amazement.
Now, at this point it would be fair to ask, “But what about your dogs?”
A fine question. It was, indeed, time to send in the hounds.
What you need to know first is these are not small-prey dogs. Traditionally, ridgebacks have worked in packs to bay lions, which makes them a poor match for scuttly, nimble creatures. Several times I watched a mouse skitter right past them. They didn’t even lift their heads.
These girls have taken down squirrels, chickens, and deer in the wild, but I don’t think they quite understand it’s possible to hunt something inside the house. Inside is for toys. Which feel and squeak suspiciously like a mouse. And so all they really did when I gave them the command to KILL! was woof in confusion and sniff curiously at the hidey-holes in the wall, long after tiny tails had whipped out of sight.
So I released them from their duties. It seemed an interminable and pointless struggle, anyway. How do you get rid of mice, in the winter, especially when they reproduce like…well, like mice?
Before we went away for the holidays, we cleared all our traps and called a Christmas truce with the mice. I’m not ashamed to admit that after weeks, the fight had worn me down. A severe CHEER drought meant we struggled to muster up even the barest motivation to light a candle or pick out a tree. We’re not even going to be here for Christmas, we reasoned. We can skip all the rigmarole this year.
“We’ll be back after the new year,” I told the mice as we headed out the door. “Back with a vengeance.” Which would’ve been a pretty cool line had I not tripped immediately after.
Unfortunately, our holiday plans were dashed by COVID. Not twenty-four hours after we'd left, we returned home to empty cabinets and a house entirely devoid of cheer.
We sank into the couch. Exhausted. Worried. Defeated. Content to stay in that exact spot and hibernate until spring. At least.
We were far from alone in this situation. All around us, we heard stories of holidays deferred, flights canceled, and plans upended. It's a “muddle-through-somehow” sort of year, made all the more difficult because of the hope that this year would be better, that the fates would allow us all to be together.
Ours was a small inconvenience, all things considered.
“At least we can resume our ground campaign on the mice,” I pointed out.
“And break our Christmas truce?” Bill said reproachfully.
“Oh. Right.”
He thought for a moment, then leaped to his feet, crying, “Woman!”—(he didn’t actually say that, I just added it for DRAMATIC EFFECT)—“What is this nonsense? Are we so jaded we can’t even put on a jolly face for one night? So what if we have mice? So what if a virus changed our plans? So what if everyone has been running a low-grade depression for the past two years?
“I tell you, when things are at their bleakest, that’s when Christmas steps in to shine! Are we going to give up just because it’s been a tough year? Surely not! Surely not, I say! We need some Christmas!”
With that, he threw on the Sufjan Christmas album, I popped some corn for stringin’, and within the hour we’d whipped up this!
That’s an asparagus fern standing in for a Christmas tree. Its little limbs were almost too delicate to hold up the popcorn strings, but it is Doing Its Best.
And this!
Nothing says CHEER like strewing a poisonous woody dioecious angiosperm about the house!
And also, for some reason, this!
Zhdun-ta Claus doesn’t make a list. He just sits patiently and waits for the children to come to him. No, no, it’s fine—take your time.
It felt simple. Spontaneous. Joyful. And it's definitely the very twee-est Christmas we've ever had.
I even managed to make cookies and we left one out for Santa, fully aware that the mice might creep over for a nibble (with all the risks that would entail). By this point it didn’t matter. I just wanted us—all of us—to have a gentler time of it. A bit of peace and goodwill.
This truce can't last forever; we all know that. Nothing does, good or bad. And yet, I'm pretty sure, if you listen carefully tonight, you'll just be able to make out a tiny, mouse-sized voice somewhere in the darkness singing “Stille Nacht,” like a little hopeful prayer.
And so Merry Christmas to you, wherever you are and however you keep it. I wish you a gentler holiday season and a softer, sweeter new year.
