Slaying Little Dragons

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. A really long time. I started this blog around 5 years ago when I was working my first summer internship. I worked for a really great company with nice people (whom I still play league softball with)(wait, is it “whom” or “who’?), and great supervisors. When you’re an intern, typically you’re responsible for certain tasks that no one in the company wants to do. Or, they’re tasks that would take up too much time for a current employee who’s already working on a team, but not enough time to justify a new full-time hire.

My position fell into the latter situation.  I still liked my position, and was challenged, but I would be lying if I said there weren’t days where I wouldn’t have a whole lot to do.  Because of this, I’d have some time to think and make my life more dramatic than it really was. So, I started this blog. I could turn the mundane things in my life into short, funny little stories. And when I say mundane, I mean it. I had enough material to write a short story about a coffee mug.

Since those first posts, I always wanted my blogs be more than “so first I did this, and then we did this, and then this happened….” bullet point view of my life. And even though I had a lot of material (graduating college, finding a real big-girl job, my own apartment…), I was never inspired to turn those things into short stories. Whenever I sat down to write something, the post would turn into bullet points.

But now, due to some family circumstances, I’m in my very own house, dealing with the random house-owning things that come with it. And I have stories.

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Starting with a very fresh story. This happened roughly three hours ago so I apologize for blabbing on, I’m still a little traumatized. 

Background: my next-door neighbor used to live in a nice house. It was clean and well kept. At some point, it stopped being cleaned and well kept, and turned into dirty and disgusting. It was dubbed the “garbage house” for a reason. Nearly two months ago, it officially became an abandoned home and started the process of foreclosure. And that’s how it sat. For two months. During the hottest July we’ve ever had.

Two weeks ago, a half dozen men in hazard suits and masks came to the house armed with dumpsters. They spent a whole day picking up the garbage and moldy food, trying not to throw up or faint every 5 minutes, while I’m sure dozens upon dozens of little critters fled their once-comfy homes.

Back to present day.

I have a grill on my deck that I have used faithfully during these summer months. I grilled whatever I had; meat, veggies, sometimes even fruit, and I did so most days of the week -- up until lately. I hadn’t grilled anything for a few weeks, and still didn’t have the desire to tonight, but something told me to open the grill anyway. I open the lid, peer inside… There’s leaves, and old mitten, and holy s—t this is a mouse nest. Thank God there isn’t any mi—Ahh!! The nest is moving! MOUSE!

Lid shut, run inside, windows and doors officially closed. I sit at the kitchen table staring at my hands. What in the hell am I supposed to do now? I try to force my heart rate slow down, and contemplate my options: #1 Turn the grill on… and deal with a really gross mess to clean up. #2 Scare the thing out of the grill so I can clean up and let the grill burn off everything else until it runs out of propane.

Option 2. I can do option 2. I think.

I put on my tennis shoes, jeans, and a long sleeve shirt and go outside to find the longest twig in my yard. My plan is to poke at from a distance until it leaves. I open the lid and ready my twig-sword. Ew ew ew, there it is. OMG THERE’S ANOTHER. OMG THERE’S TWO MORE.

HOLY S—T THERE ARE FIVE FULL-GROWN MICE IN MY GRILL.

Lid shut, back in the house, and back to the kitchen table.

Why oh why can’t my dog turn into a cat for the night and just take care of business?  Trained dog? Whatever. Useless is more like it. While I’m running in and out of the house, she just stares at me with her tail waggin’ - "no big deal here."  I can’t scare them out on my own, no way. There’s too many – they’ll gang up on me. After a few unanswered calls (THANKS A LOT, BTW), I call one of my neighbors.

“Hi, Fred, it’s Mandee. Say, I have a question for you. So, I opened the lid to my grill just now and noticed there was a mouse nest and a mouse. No big deal, I tell myself, I’ll just scare it out with this stick. Well, turns out one mouse was actually five MICE, and I don’t think I have a big enough stick to take them all on, so I was kind of wondering, as an experienced homeowner, what the hell should I do?”

“…Well, I guess they just have to be scared out of there.”

“…”

“Would you like me to come over?”

“Yes, please.”

Wonderful, brave, retired, ex-vet, knight-like Fred arrives in a suit of shining armor and gloves and walks up to my grill.

“So, you’ve got a family in here? [opens lid] Wow, would you look at that.”

He begins to take apart the grate and the other pieces of the grill as the mice scurry into the underbelly of the thing. Fred then grabs the nest into a pile, and holds it up in the air. “Do you have something I can put this in?” he says as one mouse does a very impressive swan dive off the side of the grill. I grab a plastic bag while he continues to shoo the evil things away.

“That should do it.” We light the grill, and any remaining vermin flee for their lives.

We used to have a family of falcons or hawks (I forget which) living in our backyard. They stayed around for a summer before moving on to a new home. Besides the whole fear of being attacked thing, they were nice neighbors. I miss them.