Medical Post Articles

Of mice and wives and farting Rottweilers

Oh, the lengths a husband will go to to evict an unwanted ‘house guest’ and earn the respect of his missus

Written for the Medical Post on October 20th, 2009

“SURELY, YOU’RE SMARTER than a mere mouse,” my wife said to me one day, dripping sarcasm, as she came into the kitchen to discover—yet again—a new cache of mouse droppings on the floor. And the counter. And the oven. And the table. Even in the sink.

“Yes, I certainly am,” I defiantly said. But, to be honest, I wasn’t nearly as confident as I pretended, since this particular mouse, whom I had named Marvin, had for more than two weeks defied all my Jewish husband ad hoc techniques and strategies to rid us of this unwanted house guest.

These included several mousetraps (“laughably small,” my wife noted), which Marvin had clearly come to regard as mouse restaurants; a Rube Goldberg-like barrier consisting of a large hammer, two large screwdrivers, a Crescent wrench and several batteries (A and AA), all held together and plastered to the underside of the oven with duct tape; and finally, what had more recently become the most hopeful addition to my anti-mouse arsenal: Tonka, our Rottweiler, a Darth Vader to a mouse (or so I thought), an always-hungry, smelly, endlessly farting dog that weighs 120 pounds, with a jaw and teeth that could devour a mouse in a single bite.

Even if Tonka didn’t eat Marvin, I figured his smell might drive him next door.

Despite his whiney protests about wanting to sleep closer to where the humans sleep, I started locking Tonka in the kitchen overnight, assuming—merely hoping, really—that this canine statue would perhaps try to measure up just a bit to his genes. Rotties, after all, were bred to protect, and if they can’t do that, at least to scare. But after another week of Tonka-in-the-kitchen-and-no-dead-mouse-on-the-floor, I had to regretfully accept that Tonka’s genes matched those of all Hister males—my grandfather was court-marshalled by the Polish army during the First World War for falling asleep at his post—and Tonka, too, had likely been sleeping on the job. While my wife and I describe Tonka as laconic, my mom, who minces no words, says he’s the laziest dog she’s ever seen.

“So, what are you going to do now?” was the dreaded question that greeted me on the fourth week, to which I impulsively responded, “I’m going to call pest control,” a tactic that my wife is quite used to because it’s a variation of “I’m going to get an estimate”—my standard response to any question that requires work.

And so I called pest control in the person of an old friend who’s been in the pest business for 40 years. When Bob trudged in, after stepping over Tonka and inspecting my set-up under the oven—now supplemented by a putter and a driver—he started to laugh very hard. While he wiped the tears from his eyes, I took the opportunity to intercede.

“No mercy, Bob. I want this guy caught with rat traps, at least three of them. Four or five, if possible. With machetes on the end. And I want warfarin—not just pellets, but bricks of the stuff. And don’t worry about Tonka getting them. He’s not likely to move for the next week, anyhow.”

To which Bob, stifling his guffaws, replied, “We don’t use rat traps on mice, although this sure is one big mother of a mouse you have here.” More laughter. “And,” he continued, interrupting my protests, “we for sure don’t use warfarin. Seventy-two per cent of mice in the Vancouver area are resistant to warfarin,” which drew from me the obvious: “Can’t we just assume that Marvin is one of the 28% who’s not?”

“It’s also a safety issue,” Bob went on. “We use slower, safer, more humane tactics these days.”

“Humane? For a mouse who’s living in my kitchen?” I wanted to scream. “What do you do, then?” I calmly asked instead. “Talk them into giving up?”

“We just use other methods,” he said, a non-answer that reminded me eerily of the old, “Trust me, I’m a doctor” response that is no longer supposed to be the way we do things—but which clearly works in a pinch.

While Tonka continued sleeping, and after de-constructing my oven blockade, Bob went into the basement to do whatever it is nouveau humane pest control offices do these days. I presume he called a meeting of the mice and did some negotiating to achieve the necessary result of a mouse surrender or exodus. Upon later inspection, however, I noted he placed some boxes and a pan containing some sort of gel. Was this supposed to be some kind of mouse skating rink?

Bob came back a week later to check on his handiwork, and then a week after that, too. And a week after that. And then again. Each time the play went on exactly as it had the week before.

Enter Bob.

“That mouse still around?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll just go check out what’s going on.”

Bob stepped over Tonka, entered the basement, spent a half-hour there, meeting with the mice, after which he re-entered the kitchen.

“Yup, still going strong. I’ve changed things a bit.”

“Harder negotiating tactics?”

“No, it just takes time.”

“So, tell me, Bob, will we be rid of this mouse before Obama’s second term is up?”

Eventually, we did have a happy ending—for everyone except Marvin, that is—because on the sixth week, Hallelujah! That’s actually the shout my wife gave early one morning while I was asleep, prompting visions of the Messiah. “Come quickly!”

My first thought was, miracle of miracles, Tonka had finally moved, but instead my wife was pointing excitedly at a very dead mouse lying in the garden near an exit hole we had discovered recently. “Coming or going?” she looked at me inquisitively; suddenly, it seemed, I’d become a mouse maven.

“Well, I don’t think they bury their own inside, so I presume that’s Bob’s handiwork,” I replied happily, and even Tonka shared in the celebration by opening one eye, which he quickly shut again.

And that is how I showed my wife that I am indeed smarter than a mouse. Well, until the next one moves in.

Art Hister is a physician in Vancouver.

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