Sunday night I’m doing the dishes, soapy water dripping from my fingers, and I hear a surprised little squeak and the rattle of sheet metal. Coming from the oven. “No, couldn’t be,” I think. But I check the oven anyway, scanning it with the flashlight like a lazy CSI detective. It was plausible a mouse was in there since we’ve been hearing mice in our crawlspace the last few months. I go back to the dishes and in another few minutes there’s the unmistakable sound of scrabbling coming from INSIDE the oven. I get my wife and we create a corridor of pillows, closed doors, and an open back door that will presumably lead the mouse out once I flush it free. But I already know what will really happen: the mouse will scurry out, leaping wherever it wants, she will yell at me to “Get it to go over there!” and within seconds it will disappear into the living room and we’ll never see it again. Frightened mice don’t follow plans. But we don’t find the mouse and instead set up a Havahart trap primed with peanut butter.
Fast forward to last night. It’s one AM, I’m sleeping, and my wife is still up, reading in the living room. She hears the trap clang shut. She wakes me up so I can come see the catch. It’s not a mouse. It’s three mice. And they are adorable.
She let them free outside across the street. I have no doubt they are back in our crawlspace today chattering with excitement about FREE PEANUT BUTTER.
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Those aren’t mice, they’re giant vampire bats.