Jeremiah John

A funny thing happened on my way to eating breakfast on Tuesday. Well, it actually first surfaced when Lu was here. I was making my morning oatmeal with trail mix breakfast when some of the trail mix fell out of the bottom of the bag. I noticed a hole in it and mentioned it to her (she was making her tea at the time) saying, “I must have snagged this on something.”

So, I put the bag in a baggie and called it good. Then this morning, the same thing happened and there was another hole in the baggie! Rats! (No, I’m making an exclamation here, not naming critters). Now I’ve lived here over 10 years and never, ever, have even seen a mouse or even mouse tracings. And we had them in St. Clair, despite two cats, so I know what mouse sign looks like. But, I do believe there is a mouse in the house!

I threw the bag into the trash, got ready and went to work. But, my first errand at lunchtime was to go to the Aco Hardware and buy two old-school mousetraps. From there I went home and, thank God, they hadn’t picked up the trash yet.

So, I made myself a ham salad sandwich and started taking items out of that upper cupboard. It’s where I keep my pasta, dried beans, breadcrumbs, cereal, etc. Every box and bag was inspected. If it was open (like half a box of penne pasta) I didn’t even look at it, it went into the trash. I found no other bag or box with any holes chewed in them, so it doesn’t seem like a long-time infestation. However, there was trail mix bits here and there behind things.

I got all three shelves emptied before it was time to get back to work. I was fortunate that the garbage still hadn’t been emptied so the suspect stuff from the cupboard went into the can for today’s pickup.

It was a long afternoon with everybody (including me) yawning. We each had a story about why we didn’t get much sleep the night before so we did our best to keep each other awake. Somebody mentioned that was a support system that Jake doesn't have, working at home and we were pleased, until we realized he would probably just go take a nap and get back to work later!

When I got home, I got out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the trail mix from the shelf. I didn’t wash it because I didn’t want it to smell too strange or different. Then I baited my new traps with peanut butter.

“Careful of that beaver trap, son. That’ll take your hand clean off!” I was thinking about that line from the Jeremiah Johnson movie, but picturing the traps my brothers George and Pete used on muskrat and the occasional mink when they ran trap lines in the Clinton River when I was young.

I was pleased and proud I set the traps without incident. Then I put them in place and shut the cupboard doors for the night.

I did my usual grilling (It was really nice out and I’d planned for it) of brats first (for later) and then a thick porterhouse steak. I made Uncle Ben’s Original Wild Rice as the side dish. I went with just sea salt and fresh cracked pepper on the steak, but no rosemary on the coals, and this time got it a perfect medium-rare.

It was almost 8:00 PM when I got everything cleaned up, and as I said I was tired, so I went and watched TV until bedtime. I admit I did peek at the traps (although I told myself I wouldn’t) just before going to bed, but there was nothing there.