Mice: The Most Adorable, Obnoxious House Guests

by Sharon Kayne

I’ve never had a close, personal relationship with a mouse. When I was a kid, I had a pet guinea pig and a hamster, but never a mouse. I’ve come to know more about them and—damn!—I’m impressed. They are smart, acrobatic little rodents. Not to mention, downright adorable. It’s a shame they’re also filthy and destructive, or they’d make cute, little house guests.

I came to know more about them when a friend of mine asked me to help her clean her kitchen. She has a bit of a mouse problem. Actually, it’s more like an invasion. They say that if you see one mouse, you have a problem. If you see more than one, you have an infestation. The first time I was over there to clean, I saw four (one of which was dead). I immediately took to the internet to learn more about the little beasties, so I’d be better prepared to battle them.

Turns out, mice are incontinent. Meaning, they don’t pee at intervals like the rest of us. They dribble constantly. Which explains why every surface they’ve been on has to be scrubbed. Fortunately, mouse pee is easy to clean, so you don’t need any toxic chemicals to get rid of it. Just water, a sponge, and a strong stomach. It also helps if, like me, you don’t have a very keen sense of smell. This incontinence explains why Disney’s Cinderella only gave her pet mice shirts and shoes. If she’d given them pants to wear, their dribbling would have been embarrassingly noticeable. Much better to dribble about freely—and anonymously—than to soil one’s own pants. Plus, that would have given Cinderella lots of little pants to wash, and the poor girl already had enough laundry to do.

I also learned that mice can squeeze into extremely small spaces, even getting through holes the size of a dime. They can get through even tighter spaces that are long and skinny—like the gap on the underside of a kitchen cupboard door. Just yesterday, I cleaned out my friend’s oven and found that mice had somehow managed to squeeze in there. What for, I have no idea. There was neither food nor anything to chew on inside the empty oven. From the looks of it, they just went in to poop.

Speaking of chewing—for mice, mastication is more than just a way to consume everything in your panty. Their teeth are constantly growing, so chewing on random stuff keeps them trim. That’s why, after they’ve chewed holes in your cracker boxes and eaten all of the contents, they’ll turn to your counter tops and electrical wiring. At one point on this cleaning journey, I found my friend’s pencil can. It did not, however, contain a single pencil. What it did contain was a couple of pencil ends (sans the erasers), which were attached to completely clean and unbroken pencil leads. I was seriously impressed. Imagine the talent it must take to be able to completely denude a pencil lead of its wood encasing without even breaking the lead! At the bottom of the pencil can was the leavings of said activity. Emptying it was like dumping out a pencil sharpener. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I didn’t know at that moment I’d be blogging about mice.

Perhaps one of the most distressing things I learned about mice is how fast they reproduce. One female can have as many as ten litters a year, with five or six babies in each litter. That’s enough mice to furnish several choirs, assuming some of them are talented enough to play instruments (or they sing acapella). This amazing fertility rate is why my friend has not only purchased mouse poison, but mouse birth control as well. No, that’s not a joke. She showed me the page on Amazon. I’ve not come across a mouse nest yet in my cleaning journey, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Actually, I’m expecting at some point to come across a tiny mouse hammock and, perhaps, a fully stocked minibar. That’s because mice are clearly able to make themselves completely at home in your house. And that’s what impresses me most about the little buggers. Despite being afraid of us—they run away whenever they see us—they clearly make themselves comfy under our roofs. A mouse is like a really obnoxious relative who comes to visit and never leaves. And also, doesn’t clean up after himself, replenish any of the food he consumes, or bother to flush the toilet.

Well, more like an obnoxious, incontinent relative who refuses to wear a diaper. But is disarmingly cute. I’m glad I don’t have any at my house.

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