mouse Archives – Lisa Scottoline

By Lisa Scottoline

I think I need to do my laundry more often.

Let me explain.

As you may know, I live alone.

As in, I’m celibate.

But I digress.

Since it’s just me, I don’t generate a lot of laundry.

I barely sweat.

Did I mention I’m celibate?

And also, in winter, who sweats?

Usually, I’m bundled up in fleece tops and sweatpants and from time to time, I even sleep in them.

TMI?

Get ready.

I’m about to air my dirty laundry.

Literally.

In any event, I don’t have a lot of laundry.

And when I do, I just throw it in the washing machine, which I use as a hamper.

When it’s full, then I run it off.

I don’t do it more often because I have a job.

Also, I’m trying to be ecologically sound.

Okay, I’m lazy.

I’m probably doing laundry every two weeks.

So the other day I decided to throw something in the laundry and run off a load, but inside the machine was a visitor.

A mouse.

He looked back up at me, and his expression said, “Took you a while.”

I replied, “EEEK!”

Worse, he was sitting among mouse droppings scattered over my laundry like chocolate jimmies.

Please tell me you know that’s the sprinkles they put on ice cream.

Now you’ll never eat them again.

Anyway, the mouse was alive, but barely.

I got over the initial shock, then I realized I had to get him out of there, so I got a saucepan and put it inside the machine, and trapped him. Then I put the lid on, ran him outside, and set him down in my backyard at the edge of the woods.

There’s a stream back there, too, in case he got thirsty.

And has GPS.

Anyway he scampered away.

I’m guessing he was looking for a lady who has sex.

So, happy ending.

I’m a good person, but a bad housekeeper.

I went upstairs and threw away the laundry that had been in the washing machine.

By the way, there’s a drainpipe that goes into the back of the washing machine and runs from outside the house, so I’m telling myself he got in from the outside.

That’s a better story than he was already in the house.

I can make up anything I want to.

I write fiction.

The whole thing grossed me out, but I consider myself and the mouse lucky.

I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened in the dryer.

All’s well that ends well.

And what’s my lesson?

I’m not doing my laundry more often.

But I’m gonna get a screen on that pipe.

by Lisa Scottoline

Some call this time of year autumn.

I call it spider-and-mouse season.

It’s a time of basic vermin and moral complexity.

Let me explain.

It’s turning cold in my neck of the woods, and I’m lucky enough to have a nice warm house.

Spiders know this.

They have my number.

And my address.

This time of year, if I open the front door, spiders are waiting in my entrance hall, idling like Formula One racecars. As soon as I appear, they hit the gas, gunning for me.

Actually, gunning for my house but I’m in the way.

I can deal with most insect life, even spiders, in the summer. I scoop them up with a plastic glass and trusty postcard, then put them outside.

But these are not summertime spiders.

These are autumn spiders, as big as Ferraris.

They go from 0 to 60 in a second, and the finish line is my threshold.

But I can’t bring myself to kill them.

That’s the moral complexity part.

I respect their individual creatureness, and most of them are smarter than I am.

I mean, I can’t spin a web.

Can you?

Nor do I have the patience to sit outside somebody’s door all night and wait for them to open it.

This would be the exact feeling of my marriage to Thing Two.

God bless divorce.

To return to point, even though I can’t kill the spiders, I don’t want them inside.

Because they’re scary.

So as soon as they start running for me, I chase them around with my glass and postcard, trying to trap them and take them outside.

If two race in, I can get one.

If four race in, I can get two.

So, you see this isn’t working.

I spend the rest of the morning trying to find the ones who got in, amazed at how they flatten themselves to get under the baseboard or how fast they scoot to reach the floor vent.

I actually admire the ones who get away.

I decide they deserve to live in my nice warm house with me.

Just so they stay out of bed.

I have the same problem with mice. The other night I walked into my entrance hall and there was one little mouse curled up in a corner.

Daughter Francesca happened to be home, so I called her.

Okay, I’ll be real. I screamed to her.

Then the mouse started running around and Francesca tried to catch it with a box lid, then somehow, I slipped on the kitchen floor and started laughing so hard that the mouse got away.

Basically, a cartoon.

We searched but couldn’t find the mouse.

Meanwhile, our cats Mimi and Vivi were nowhere in sight.

They’re both seventeen years old, so I forgive them.

They were probably reading AARP magazine.

So now there’s a mouse in my house.

I’m trying to be scrupulous about cleaning up, but the dry cat food is down all day, so I’m sure I’m feeding both cats and mice.

I have a friend who found a mouse in her kitchen, then a stash of dry dog food that the mouse had been storing in the oven.

That’s one smart mouse.

I bet it can spin a web.

I keep looking for my mouse, but I have yet to find it, and It’s driving me crazy.

It’s living rent-free in my house and my head.

The only solution?

Stop thinking about it.

Pretend it’s not happening.

It just wants a roof over its head.

So do I.

Dirty Laundry

Scary Season

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