EEEK! THEY’RE BACK. Even before the mouse invasion at our house, I got a tipoff that the varmints were on the march again.
The alert came at the checkout counter of my local Wal-Mart, where you couldn’t miss the enormous display piled high with familiar yellow boxes of d-CON’s Mouse-Prufe II.
When it gets cold, the mice do the equivalent of going to Florida for the winter. In this case, their Florida is my kitchen.
So as soon as I spotted the big floor display, I plunked a couple of d-CON four-packs ($4.92) into my cart, crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t have to use them. Maybe if I had the stuff on hand, it would inoculate our house against the scampering hordes.
To further guard against an infestation, I studied several Web sites. Pestworld.org makes the common house mouse sound like a highly trained commando that can “adapt quickly to changing conditions.” And d-conproducts.com warns: “This is war.”
Apparently, these crafty pests are evolving into the rodent equivalent of Gen. Patton, mapping their battlefield strategies to sneak into the box of Wheat Thins (after squirming through tiny cracks in the house foundation no bigger than the diameter of a pencil).
And this comes on top of another alarming biological trend. The house cat–whose very DNA is supposed to tell it to rid the house of vermin–has been coddled into a Meow Mix stupor that renders it utterly useless for mouse patrol.
For a short time this winter I convinced myself that I’d finally detoured my annual mouse problem to the neighbors’ houses merely by wishing it to be so. That was a classic example of hope triumphing over experience.
A loaf of bread carelessly left on the kitchen counter this week turned into a high-fiber midnight banquet for an entire family of health-conscious mice.
Fortunately, I had eight handy wedges of d-CON to distribute throughout the kitchen. Unfortunately, the mice merely moved upstairs–to the bedroom.
———-
Read Ellen’s shopping adviser column every Thursday in the Tribune’s At Play section and join the conversation at chicagotribune.com/ellen.
shopellen@tribune.com
