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Butch Furse
The other day a person questioned me if I ever had a mouse problem because he was facing one. I assured him that a long time ago I had faced a mouse problem, but I wasn’t the one to solve his problem.
My lone mouse solution wasn’t one I would recommend. It had occurred in the early years of my marriage to the Betterhalf. However, he insisted he wanted to hear of my past experience with the pesky critters. Reluctantly, I finally conceded.
My story began in the early 1960’s when the Betterhalf, I and our young son moved into an old turn-of-the-century five-bedroom rental house. In the growing Iowa community where I worked, rentals were hard to find and we had plenty of space including a dirt floor basement with decaying brick walls.
Coming home after work, I was greeted by a frightened Betterhalf yelling at me there was a mouse in the house and she had just spotted it in the bathroom. It was obvious she expected the “man of the house” to cool her fears and solve the problem.
She handed me a broom and sent me toward the bathroom. As I entered the bathroom she slammed the door behind me and told me I wasn’t coming out until I eliminated the mouse. It wasn’t a few minutes later I spotted the mouse hiding behind a bathtub leg and the chase was on. Under the tub; behind the stool; corner to corner he went with me and the broom in hot pursuit. And suddenly the mouse turned on me. The mouse had run up my pant leg!
With a mouse up your pant leg it’s hard to maintain your concentration, particularly on the original chase. Instead, I was busy not only shaking a leg, but trying to grab at him to prevent him from going higher and biting me. I shouted to the Betterhalf, but she made it clear the door would not be opened until the mouse was gone.
Thankfully, the mouse must have heard her. He dropped to the floor and scampered under the tub where he found a space between the tub drain and floor that provided his escape route to the dirt floor basement.
I convinced the Betterhalf the mouse was gone. The mouse must have heard me because he never appeared again. I assumed he lived happily ever after in his dirt, floor-brick walled basement.
RL Furse is publisher emeritus of the News-Register
