Today is Elvis' birthday. He would have been 76 years old. To celebrate, I'm going to tell you about my Elvis experience. And I apologize up front for the length of this story. I know that you've become accustomed to brevity from me. And I should preface the story by saying that I've never met the King. But My Elvis Experience is still a good story. A long story, but a good one.
I simply adore Elvis. I have most of his music on my iPod and on any given day, there is at least one Elvis song running on a continuous loop in my head. Yesterday's song was Suspicious Minds. Today's selection is Viva Las Vegas. Tomorrow's song? Who the crap knows. All I'm saying is that I like Elvis.
My adoration of Elvis is so great that I have a purse emblazoned with his likeness. Yep, my purse boasts the image of a black leather clad Elvis and his guitar from the '68 Comeback Special. And it's beautiful. But that's not all.
What could possibly make an Elvis purse just a scooch better? Nothing, you answer. Wrong! Rhinestones. Yeah, baby. Rhinestones make the purse a wee bit better, making it just about perfect. The image of Elvis and his guitar on my purse is tastefully decorated with just the right amount of rhinestones - one less would be a sin and one more would totally jump the shark. Rhinestone placement is, as is life, a delicate balancing act. In short, I heart my Elvis purse. That's why it hurts so much that a mouse pooped in it.
Picture it: the year was 2007. December 2007. The day was sunny, yet bitterly cold. I was in my car driving to pick up the youngest child at preschool on the last day of school before Christmas break when I suddenly got the feeling that I was not alone. Cognitively, I knew that no one else was in the car with me, but the feeling persisted. And it was creepy.
Then, in the week between Christmas and New Years, I needed to get a deposit slip out of my checkbook. I should explain that my checkbook lives in peace and harmony in my purse in my car. I pulled out the stack of deposit slips and it looked as though someone had taken a bite out of the stack. A perfect semi-circle, complete with nibble marks, was missing from the deposit slip. I, being very mature, immediately blamed my two-year-old niece who was rifling through my purse on Christmas. She was experimenting with her new molars on various objects that day, so it was a logical assumption.
The following Saturday the fam and I went to visit my Grandmother in another state. For long car trips, we allow the kids to watch a movie in the car. When my husband was hooking up the DVD player in the car he noticed what appeared to be a little nest made of stuffing in the back of the car. In a decision that would later come back to haunt him, he kept this bit of information completely to himself. He didn't say a word to me about the nest.
Later that day I noticed what seemed to be black shavings around one of the kid's booster seats. I asked my husband if he thought the shavings were from something rubbing against the booster seat. He blatantly lied and said probably. Not maybe or hon, I think we've got a situation here, but probably. He then watched me WITH MY BARE HAND brush the "shavings" off of the booster seat and onto the ground.
Six days later, I wanted a piece of spearmint Trident gum. I conveniently keep a pack in the little console/drink holder thingy in the front seat of the Pilot. I opened the lid to the console and was very surprised at what I found. It looked like something had eaten through the packaging on the gum (though not on the gum itself - guess whatever ate the package didn't like spearmint?). Whatever had eaten the gum packaging had also chewed up a corner of a small package of travel Kleenex. The Kleenex were shredded and strewn about merrily inside the console. This this this thing had nibbled on a wooden token for a free kid's meal at Texas Roadhouse, too.
You might assume that it was at this point that I began to connect the dots and figure out that a mouse was to blame. Oh no, I am far denser than that. It was at this point that I wondered if the girls' pet hamster had somehow gotten loose in the car and wrecked this havoc.
I will now admit to you that it was about two hours later when I realized that my girls don't have a hamster and that this had to be the work of a mouse.
I mentioned my findings to my husband (minus the hamster part because he already considers me somewhat of an airhead and really, why further that speculation). He said that he figured out we had a mouse living in the car about ten days prior to me figuring it out. Ten days, people. Ten loooooong days for those mice to do nothing but eat and procreate in my car. Eeeewww! Full body shudder.
Husband decided not to mention the news to me because he thought it might freak me out. Don't know why he thought that. But he shared the story with everyone in his cubicle at work. Delightful. I so enjoy being the subject of examination by a bunch of engineers.
Personally, I don't think I have a tendency to freak out. Cool as a cucumber under most circumstances. As a matter of fact, I thought I was holding myself together fairly well with the whole "mouse in my car and in my purse" situation until it dawned on my later that the mouse had probably pooped inside of my purse. MY ELVIS PRESLEY PURSE WITH THE OH-SO-FASHIONABLE RHINESTONES ON IT!! The horror! The horror! Whatever shall I do?!
Okay. Maybe I am a tad prone to freaking out. I am the first one to admit that I probably wouldn't win any awards for poise or decorum when the poop-in-the-purse realization hit, but EWW! The nerve of a mouse doing that to the King. Seriously, it's just wrong.
I refused to drive the Pilot until I had proof that the rodent infestation was over. Instead, I commandeered the husband's truck. And I hate driving the truck. Through no fault of his own, the truck permanently smells like fart (long story) and you exit the vehicle smelling like fart. The smell lingers for hours and causes folks nearby to look questioningly at you as if to say "Dude, are you ill?". Others look appalled and pull small children away from you. Oh well. Desperate times and all of that. Pick the lesser of the two evils: vermin pandemic or fart smell. Going to have to pick the door marked SBD on this one, folks.
My husband purchased two spring loaded mouse traps for a staggering seventy-eight cents. For both traps. Seventy-eight cents. He assured me that these were quality traps. For seventy-eight cents. He slathered peanut butter on them and set them in my car, all the while assuring me that traps were a much better idea than my idea of trading in the car for something with a considerably smaller rodent population. Like zero.
Half an hour after he set the traps, husband bounced out to the garage all hopped up on anticipation. He returned to the kitchen quite defeated. The traps were clean. There was no peanut butter in either trap. Nor was there a mouse.
He put more peanut butter on the traps and gently re-set them in the car. Two hours later, no peanut butter, no mouse.
He spent about twenty minutes messing around with the traps, trying to make the spring mechanism (his words) more sensitive. He had a quick, internal debate in front of the opened pantry about smooth vs. chunky peanut butter. Smooth won. Another quick application of peanut butter and the traps went back in the car.
The next morning, same story. No peanut butter, no mouse. I said that by this time we were feeding the mouse and it was now our pet. Apparently that wasn't funny at 6 in the morning.
I called my dad for some advice on mouse removal. He offered none, but did comment that "Mice love Hondas". What?!
According to my dad, Hondas are the automobile of choice for mice. He went on to state that mice have lived in quite a few of his Hondas over the years and the fact that a mouse had made itself comfortable in mine was no surprise. Evidently it was only a matter of time.
You think a topic such as this would have surfaced during the three month span of time my husband and I spent researching, test driving, and poling family members about different vehicles. We wanted to make the right choice. I think a comment like "Jen, mice love Hondas" would have been enough to make me weight that fact against others like gas mileage or cost to insure, but I digress.
That evening I had to drive the fart smelling truck to the oldest child's gymnastic lesson. Hate driving the truck, but it's better than the mousemobile. I was talking to my friend, T., at gymnastics about the mouse situation. She suggested traps made by De-Con (T. had a mouse-in-the-garage problem, emphasis on had).
I went, in the pouring down rain mind you, to the rodent control section of the nearest grocery store and I purchased two traps for five bucks. They were deluxe and totally state of the art mouse traps. Once at home I unveiled my new expensive mouse traps with a flourish.
"These," I said "are the answer to our problem!".
My new, pricey traps were promptly pooh-poohed and called a waste of money. The husband did humor me by putting peanut butter in them and setting them in the car. The tone, I have to say, was one of pure condescension and the act was that of a man who was clearly setting the traps, not because he believed in their power, but solely to amuse his wife. I'm cool with that.
The next morning both of my extravagant and preposterously priced traps were full. As in mouse caught. As in Operation Rodent Eradication success. As in vindication for me. Wait … did you say both traps were full? As in more than one mouse?
Husband announced that the mouse problem was officially over and I could now relinquish his truck keys. Oh, I don't think so. He foolishly thought that the story ended here, with full mouse traps. I asked him to drive the car back to the store, buy two more fancy traps, and set them in the car. I needed to be sure that the mice weren't busy in there creating more mice. I am a person of great principles and morals. I won't drive a Honda full of mouse sin.
I had visions of an entire mouse community having set up camp in my Honda. After all, mice like Hondas.
*an update: Got the Elvis purse dry cleaned, got a cat, still drive the same Honda, and I'm 98% sure that no mice are currently living in my car. Happy birthday, Elvis! I so love your music!
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Then, in the week between Christmas and New Years, I needed to get a deposit slip out of my checkbook. I should explain that my checkbook lives in peace and harmony in my purse in my car. I pulled out the stack of deposit slips and it looked as though someone had taken a bite out of the stack. A perfect semi-circle, complete with nibble marks, was missing from the deposit slip. I, being very mature, immediately blamed my two-year-old niece who was rifling through my purse on Christmas. She was experimenting with her new molars on various objects that day, so it was a logical assumption.
The following Saturday the fam and I went to visit my Grandmother in another state. For long car trips, we allow the kids to watch a movie in the car. When my husband was hooking up the DVD player in the car he noticed what appeared to be a little nest made of stuffing in the back of the car. In a decision that would later come back to haunt him, he kept this bit of information completely to himself. He didn't say a word to me about the nest.
Later that day I noticed what seemed to be black shavings around one of the kid's booster seats. I asked my husband if he thought the shavings were from something rubbing against the booster seat. He blatantly lied and said probably. Not maybe or hon, I think we've got a situation here, but probably. He then watched me WITH MY BARE HAND brush the "shavings" off of the booster seat and onto the ground.
Six days later, I wanted a piece of spearmint Trident gum. I conveniently keep a pack in the little console/drink holder thingy in the front seat of the Pilot. I opened the lid to the console and was very surprised at what I found. It looked like something had eaten through the packaging on the gum (though not on the gum itself - guess whatever ate the package didn't like spearmint?). Whatever had eaten the gum packaging had also chewed up a corner of a small package of travel Kleenex. The Kleenex were shredded and strewn about merrily inside the console. This this this thing had nibbled on a wooden token for a free kid's meal at Texas Roadhouse, too.
You might assume that it was at this point that I began to connect the dots and figure out that a mouse was to blame. Oh no, I am far denser than that. It was at this point that I wondered if the girls' pet hamster had somehow gotten loose in the car and wrecked this havoc.
I will now admit to you that it was about two hours later when I realized that my girls don't have a hamster and that this had to be the work of a mouse.
I mentioned my findings to my husband (minus the hamster part because he already considers me somewhat of an airhead and really, why further that speculation). He said that he figured out we had a mouse living in the car about ten days prior to me figuring it out. Ten days, people. Ten loooooong days for those mice to do nothing but eat and procreate in my car. Eeeewww! Full body shudder.
Husband decided not to mention the news to me because he thought it might freak me out. Don't know why he thought that. But he shared the story with everyone in his cubicle at work. Delightful. I so enjoy being the subject of examination by a bunch of engineers.
Personally, I don't think I have a tendency to freak out. Cool as a cucumber under most circumstances. As a matter of fact, I thought I was holding myself together fairly well with the whole "mouse in my car and in my purse" situation until it dawned on my later that the mouse had probably pooped inside of my purse. MY ELVIS PRESLEY PURSE WITH THE OH-SO-FASHIONABLE RHINESTONES ON IT!! The horror! The horror! Whatever shall I do?!
Okay. Maybe I am a tad prone to freaking out. I am the first one to admit that I probably wouldn't win any awards for poise or decorum when the poop-in-the-purse realization hit, but EWW! The nerve of a mouse doing that to the King. Seriously, it's just wrong.
I refused to drive the Pilot until I had proof that the rodent infestation was over. Instead, I commandeered the husband's truck. And I hate driving the truck. Through no fault of his own, the truck permanently smells like fart (long story) and you exit the vehicle smelling like fart. The smell lingers for hours and causes folks nearby to look questioningly at you as if to say "Dude, are you ill?". Others look appalled and pull small children away from you. Oh well. Desperate times and all of that. Pick the lesser of the two evils: vermin pandemic or fart smell. Going to have to pick the door marked SBD on this one, folks.
My husband purchased two spring loaded mouse traps for a staggering seventy-eight cents. For both traps. Seventy-eight cents. He assured me that these were quality traps. For seventy-eight cents. He slathered peanut butter on them and set them in my car, all the while assuring me that traps were a much better idea than my idea of trading in the car for something with a considerably smaller rodent population. Like zero.
Half an hour after he set the traps, husband bounced out to the garage all hopped up on anticipation. He returned to the kitchen quite defeated. The traps were clean. There was no peanut butter in either trap. Nor was there a mouse.
He put more peanut butter on the traps and gently re-set them in the car. Two hours later, no peanut butter, no mouse.
He spent about twenty minutes messing around with the traps, trying to make the spring mechanism (his words) more sensitive. He had a quick, internal debate in front of the opened pantry about smooth vs. chunky peanut butter. Smooth won. Another quick application of peanut butter and the traps went back in the car.
The next morning, same story. No peanut butter, no mouse. I said that by this time we were feeding the mouse and it was now our pet. Apparently that wasn't funny at 6 in the morning.
I called my dad for some advice on mouse removal. He offered none, but did comment that "Mice love Hondas". What?!
According to my dad, Hondas are the automobile of choice for mice. He went on to state that mice have lived in quite a few of his Hondas over the years and the fact that a mouse had made itself comfortable in mine was no surprise. Evidently it was only a matter of time.
You think a topic such as this would have surfaced during the three month span of time my husband and I spent researching, test driving, and poling family members about different vehicles. We wanted to make the right choice. I think a comment like "Jen, mice love Hondas" would have been enough to make me weight that fact against others like gas mileage or cost to insure, but I digress.
That evening I had to drive the fart smelling truck to the oldest child's gymnastic lesson. Hate driving the truck, but it's better than the mousemobile. I was talking to my friend, T., at gymnastics about the mouse situation. She suggested traps made by De-Con (T. had a mouse-in-the-garage problem, emphasis on had).
I went, in the pouring down rain mind you, to the rodent control section of the nearest grocery store and I purchased two traps for five bucks. They were deluxe and totally state of the art mouse traps. Once at home I unveiled my new expensive mouse traps with a flourish.
"These," I said "are the answer to our problem!".
My new, pricey traps were promptly pooh-poohed and called a waste of money. The husband did humor me by putting peanut butter in them and setting them in the car. The tone, I have to say, was one of pure condescension and the act was that of a man who was clearly setting the traps, not because he believed in their power, but solely to amuse his wife. I'm cool with that.
The next morning both of my extravagant and preposterously priced traps were full. As in mouse caught. As in Operation Rodent Eradication success. As in vindication for me. Wait … did you say both traps were full? As in more than one mouse?
Husband announced that the mouse problem was officially over and I could now relinquish his truck keys. Oh, I don't think so. He foolishly thought that the story ended here, with full mouse traps. I asked him to drive the car back to the store, buy two more fancy traps, and set them in the car. I needed to be sure that the mice weren't busy in there creating more mice. I am a person of great principles and morals. I won't drive a Honda full of mouse sin.
I had visions of an entire mouse community having set up camp in my Honda. After all, mice like Hondas.
*an update: Got the Elvis purse dry cleaned, got a cat, still drive the same Honda, and I'm 98% sure that no mice are currently living in my car. Happy birthday, Elvis! I so love your music!
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