My husband went to a HIIT class at the gym tonight. I was in the kitchen when he got home. He walked in, we said hello, then he dropped his water bottle in the kitchen sink, put his keys on the counter and turned to hang his gym bag on one of the chairs at our kitchen table.
Then he screamed “OMG — there’s a mouse!!!” like the little girly-girl that I always knew he was. Just kidding — I don’t think that about him, but it was refreshing to hear him actually screech just like I would have screeched if there was a mouse hanging off my gym bag.
And that’s exactly what happened — there was a brown mouse hanging off the outside of his gym bag, clinging to the fabric as he went for a traumatic roller coaster ride through our kitchen, a ride that he definitely didn’t sign up for nor did he remember purchasing a ticket. I screamed for my husband to bring the bag outside, he ran to open our front door, but then the mouse must have looked like he was going to jump off the bag before he could open the storm door, so my husband hurled the bag…at the closed glass door.
Momentarily stunned and possibly concussed, the mouse hid in the corner behind our front door and tried to burrow under my husband’s stash of old sneakers (that’ll teach him to pile shoes in the hallway!) and my husband screamed for me to get him a glass. But what kind of glass? A wine glass? A pint glass? A plastic glass?? There are just so many choices in our house and I didn’t know what he was going to do with the glass…trap the mouse or offer him a beer from the keg?
Well he wanted just any glass, something that would allow him to trap the mouse and force him outside and away from our house. Now armed with the a pint glass made from actual glass, my husband tried to push the mouse from behind one of his shoes and out the front door. It looked like he was going to be successful, the mouse retreated under the heavy front door into the space between that door and the glass storm door, but then he must have decided things looked better on the inside, because he came back under the door and headed for those old sneakers (I can’t imagine because they smell good, but then I am not a mouse).
There was screaming, there was chaos, there was definitely a scared mouse — the whole episode must have only lasted 60 seconds, but they were probably the longest 60 seconds for the mouse, and then we finally got him in between the space between the two doors. I was just ready to head out the back door to run around to the front of the house to open the glass storm door while my husband monitored the door into house, but he was able to open the storm door a little bit while keeping the inside door almost closed and thankfully the mouse went running out of our house and disappeared into the bushes.
And I don’t blame him — he probably didn’t want to be in our house any more than we wanted him there. But how did he get onto my husband’s gym bag? The only solution my husband could come up with was there was an old piece of chocolate in the bag and he’d stuck the bag under a bench at the gym. Maybe the mouse smelled it and crawled into the bag. I wonder if he ever found the candy and then if it was worth it — he must have spent a good hour trapped in a smelly bag as my husband drove from the gym, ran a few errands and then headed home. He was probably dizzy, tired and confused and then there was screaming and he got slammed into a hard surface. Not a good Tuesday evening that’s for sure.
And now he’s stuck outside in a new neighborhood and he didn’t even get to eat that melted chocolate. And I am worried that maybe he invited a few friends that we haven’t seen yet. We stuck my husband’s entire gym bag into the washing machine. And I threw out that pint glass. I just couldn’t imagine offering anyone a cold beer from the tap with that glass…
Notes from a Self Quarantine 