Remember that mouse I found in the grill a few weeks back? The one that we were pretty sure was living in the crack between the hot tub and the patio stairs? Sure you do! We named him Mickey, and Jackson would throw bits of popcorn in between the hot tub and the stairs so Mickey could survive. He was sort of like a pet. Anyway, turns out old Mickey wasn’t living in between the hot tub and the stairs, turns out he was living IN the house, and turns out he died in an inhumane trap that the people before us must have set and he’d been dead for about a week before we found him. Turns out Mickey the Mouse was a little mooch and I’m not saying he got what he deserved, but I’m not saying he didn’t either. Cause he did have a chance at freedom…

A week before Thanksgiving I was out grabbing some last minute items when Jerimiah called to tell me a fun story. He had been working in his makeshift office (his office is being renovated so he’s been working from home and since I have the official “office” he had to make one out of the Lego table in the family room. He’s fine, no tears for him. Le sigh.) Anyway, the family room is downstairs, and so is that weird, catch-all room we call “The Cat Room” because it’s small, mainly for storage, and the people before us had a cat and the ADT Alarm has it saved as “The Cat Room,” so we ran with it. The Cat Room has a door that goes out onto the patio, which of course is where the hot tub is, and where we thought Mickey was living.

Ahem, so on this day Jerimiah heard a noise. A funny, little noise. He thought I was upstairs doing something, so he ignored it. Then it happened again, only this time I wasn’t at home. So he went to investigate. That is when he met Mickey, face to face, Mickey’s back legs caught in a trap. Mickey was still alive, so Jerimiah grabbed some gloves, took Mickey out of the trap and set him free! Free, I tell you! In. Our. Backyard. When he told me I was all, “Okay. Umm, do you think he will come right back to where he was, since you know, warm house and all?” And Jerimiah was confident that no, he would not. After all, Mickey was a smart mouse. He was confident, until the smell came a week later.

I was starting to pull out the Christmas decorations, which I keep in The Cat Room because honestly, what else do you put in there? And I smelled something so pungent that I knew it could only be one thing.

“Something has died in The Cat Room,” I told Jerimiah. He scoffed at me and said something like, “Probably not.” So I ignored him, sprayed Lysol everywhere and let him work it out himself. I have to do this sometimes. He’s a proud guy, y’all. Sometimes I just have to say the thing, the truth, then let him rail against it, then let him stew, then allow him time to realize that yes, I am right and then he usually admits defeat and fixes the problem. Only this time it didn’t take too long, because he walked downstairs and was hit by the smell.

Turns out I was partially right. Mickey had died in another inhumane trap set by the people before us, but it wasn’t in The Cat Room, it was in the small crawl space under the stairs where the water heater is. Mickey had died in The Cat Room Adjecent. How long he had been there, I don’t know. That’s a lie. It was about a week. Because I am sure that the day Jerimiah “saved” him, he ran right back into the house as I suspected. But I let Jerimiah have this win. That’s important sometimes.

So there you have it. The story of Mickey the Dead Mouse. That’s what you asked about, yeah?

M.