Ladybug Farms: I Didn't Scream

This is how my friend and I caught mice when we were kids

In honor of my 52 Weeks of New project, I have a story to tell...

Once upon a time, there was a girl who woke up in the wee hours of the morning, got out of her warm bed, and stumbled blindly into the dark kitchen. She turned the light on, went to open the pantry, and gasp! Something bolted out of said pantry right in front of her feet. She leaped onto a chair and stood there screaming like a little girl until her dashing husband hauled himself out of bed and came to save her.

She made said husband set out traps all over the kitchen and basement. She tried to be a big girl about it. Even though she knew it was silly, she just couldn't stop herself from being afraid to be the first one to enter her kitchen every morning. She either waited until someone else, someone braver, went first, or stomped her way to the kitchen to scare all rodents away before she turned on the light. She hated feeling paralyzed every time she had to go into the basement storage room to get something out of her stockpile pantry. She tried to be brave, but with each new catch, a little piece of her security died until she was crying, afraid of her own house, and at the end of her ability to cope. She called in the big guns--an exterminator. It was either that or move.

He came in like a blazing fire. He set out bait stations. He set out traps. He plugged up holes with steel wool. After he was done, she never saw another squeeker again.

Until now.

She is three years older, hopefully three years wiser. She found evidence of mice in her basement stockpile pantry. She didn't run away this time. She continued to cull her pantry for expired and donatable items even while her skin was crawling. But she didn't scream or do the eeby-geeby dance. She ordered her sick husband to set out the traps but he could only find two. That's alright, she would go to the store and buy more. She bought a four-pack, brought them home, baited them and set them out all by herself. Yes, all by herself. A first.

She still is a little afraid to check the traps and she is very thankful for daughters who think it's fun to jump out of bed each morning to go on a mouse hunt. So far they've only caught one--two nights in a row with no catch--dare she hope it was just a small invasion and not the whole extended mouse family??? Ya, even she knows that's wishful thinking.

Yesterday her husband commented on how he was shocked that she was handling this latest invasion so well. She wasn't crying. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't threatening to move. She made no mention of buying a cat. Or of calling in an exterminator. She was handling it like an inconvenience but not like it was the end of the world as she knows it.

Take that! stupid, silly, paralyzing, horrible, irrational fear of mice. I'm bigger than you!