Ok… more like the Burb Slicker.

The first thing you need to understand is that we live at the end of a dirt road in a tiny New Hampshire town surrounded by acres of ponds, woods and fields. Mice are a fact of life. They’ve trashed our phone wires, destroyed everything in the attic that wasn’t sealed, leave droppings and seeds in every corner and basically wreak havoc on the walls, siding and crawl spaces. But, they’re like family — they’re just sort of there and you take them for granted, like your eccentric aunt or mad, mad uncle.

So now we have a dear family member staying with us for a while whom we’ll just call T. T is from the burbs and he’s on a mission. He’s helping us clean out the garage and attic, and seems to be a little overwhelmed by our, uh… unwavering supply of critters. So yesterday, he hit Edmund’s and stocked up on mouse traps — nothing fancy — just the normal wood things with the little copper-colored trigger. Then he hit the Harvester Market and stocked up on peanut butter (yes, peanut butter… catches way more mice than cheese or any other treat).

Last night, T says with a grin “I have to go set my traps“. Tonight we go out to dinner and he says with a grin “I caught three“. After we get home, he says with a grin “I have to go set my traps.“.

I have never in my life been so grateful… for the long overdue cleaning in the garage and attic… for helping keep the outside mice outside (the indoor mice belong to the two cats)… and for the constant chuckle I get from the cartoon in my head — the one where a guy’s setting a few traps and there’s one mouse peering in the window and relaying the trap location to the thousands of mice behind him.