Mouse in the Dishwasher

One night, not too long ago, my daughter, Melissa and her husband, Donny, and I arrived home after work at about the same time. It was later - we'd all had things to do after work. Donny went on into their bedroom (they're renting from me, by the way) and Melissa and I were digging around in the kitchen, trying to come up with something resembling a dinner that could appear on our plates within five minutes. I opened up one of the kitchen drawers to discover that my hot pads had been chewed up into little bitty pieces and the drawer was full of mouse poop. The hot pads were no great loss. Some of them had been with me 16 years ago in Santa Barbara so I guess they could stand to be replaced. Obviously, the crisis here was the existence of a mouse in the kitchen. We haven't had a mouse for quite some time. The last time I found one it was in the trash compactor. Gross but convenient and it was dispatched quickly and quietly. We have four cats between us but the occasional mouse comes in somehow behind the kitchen cabinets so the cats never see them. Anyway, Melissa and I were on the hunt.

I emptied out the hot pad drawer, cleaned and sterilized it, threw away hot pads, and hoped (naively) that the mouse was done with me and had retired to the great outdoors. There was still the matter of dinner to attend to. I moved on to one of my junk drawers (come on, you know you have one). I must have been cooking something by then but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was. I went to grab a spatula but the whole junk drawer (which, by the way, is a long way from the hot pad drawer) was filled with - yep - mouse poop. Great. In case you're wondering, Melissa was still in the kitchen with me, hovering in the background. She lends her moral support to the cooking process but rarely participates. I was pretty bummed now. Hot pads were one thing but now I was going to have to wash all the ...junk. So, I opened up the dishwasher and was just going to offload the entire drawerful into my fabulous, superheated, sterilizing dishwasher and call it good.

Well, of course, you've guessed it by now. Yes, the dishwasher was filled with mouse poop. For some reason, I hadn't been too terribly surprised by poop in the drawers but the dishwasher? My brain wasn't processing. I closed the dishwasher door and then re-opened it, as if I had imagined the whole thing. Still filled with poop. At that, all of a sudden, Melissa started screaming bloody murder. I had no idea what had set her off but I didn't want her to feel alone so I started screaming too. At the same time I was looking around trying to figure out what the matter was but continued with my support screaming. (Melissa support cooks, I support scream.) Of course, this brought Donny out of the bedroom to the rescue. I started to open the dishwasher door again and Melissa directed her screaming at me! What the heck? Eventually, I realized the the mouse was still in residence and it was sitting in the bottom of the dishwasher staring at me. I hadn't seen it when I had opened the door the two previous times. Because I had been screaming right along with Melissa, she mistakenly assumed that I had seen the offender. She couldn't believe I was opening the door yet again thus allowing for the possibility that the mouse would launch itself seven feet out into the air and attack her face.

Donny was the manly voice of reason. He got us both to shut up and then armed himself with garden gloves and began to try to grab the little guy. That mouse was quick, though, and every time Donny lunged for it, it scooted under the water-shooter-outer bar (you know, that thing in the bottom of the dishwasher that looks like a sprinkler). He'd lunge, miss, Melissa would start screaming, I'd commence support screaming, Donny would tell us to shut up and then the cycle would begin again. Finally, after about a dozen tries, Donny was able to grab the mouse. Melissa and I then went screaming down the hallway while Donny took the mouse outside and, I assume, relocated it to a nice comfy home somewhere away from the house where it could safely rear it's young. The whole process was exhausting. We had to resort to wine, cheese, and tricuits for dinner.