Which is more upsetting?
- That I ended up with mouse poop in my hand today.
- That it took me a while to realize that I had a handful of mouse poop.
- That after realizing I had a handful of mouse poop, other unpleasant realities were revealed.
Little shredded bits of paper and plastic in the junk drawer ought to have been a clue that mice had been at work, but at first I thought it was abrasion, or the breakdown of cheap plastic, which does happen. I ought to have put two and two (or poo and poo) together sooner, but I simply didn’t expect a mouse incursion in my junk drawer. We take things out and/or put things into that drawer nearly every day. In the ten years we’ve lived here, there have never been any mice in that drawer or in the cabinets below it.
As a germaphobe, that handful of mouse poop was quite traumatic for me. I washed and washed and backed the washing up with a dose of hand sanitizer (which, believe it or not, I generally do not use). Good thing I already have a mantra: You have to believe your hands are clean. You have to believe your hands are clean. You have to believe your hands are clean. (Say it enough times, it must be true.)
So then, having put two and two together, I remembered that a few weeks ago we found a hole in a bag of spice in the spice drawer. At the time, we thought it was abrasion that had caused the hole, so we simply put it into another bag. Today, with more information in hand (literally), it occurred to me, could that hole have been caused by mice also? So I mentioned that to my husband, and he replied, “I took care of it.” Translation: “Yes, I realized later that it was mice, but I didn’t mention it to you, because you had eaten contaminated spice and I was trying to shield you from that knowledge.”
Shit. I hate mice. I can’t believe that I once wrote a story about a friendly mouse. Mice are not friendly. They are horrible little monsters that get into your stuff and poop all over it. And unlike children, which arguably do the same, there’s no chance that mice will take care of you when you get old. Mice suck.