Janitor of Eden

After two weeks away, the first thing to do is empty the mousetraps. Very fortunately there was only one mouse cadaver, fresh thank God, because had it been two weeks old it'd be stuck to the floor. I'd left May 20, just when there's so much to do to ensure a good summer here. Like:

• repair the porch screen. My sworn enemies, the squirrels, chewed through it and gnawed the plastic gasket from the metal step-can I store those delicious sunflower seeds in -- but failed to get to the seeds. Nyah, nyah.
• buy basil and dill plants and soil for repotting into the pots they'll occupy all summer, pots carried into full sun every morning and sheltered next to the house at nightfall, because otherwise the squirrels overturn and uproot them out of pure spite.
• clean and refill hummingbird feeders. I almost didn't want to leave for two weeks because the empty feeders would disappoint the hummingbirds, but I'm hoping my extra-sweet nectar recipe will persuade them to return and trust me; I don't intend to leave them again.
• retrieve the seed feeder from the underbrush where raccoons had dragged and left it; soap and rinse it, dry it in the sun. Acquire a poison-ivy hickey on my left leg.
• greet new young turtles and rabbits who have no idea I live here too.
• witness a high-speed chase: Miss Turkey in hot pursuit of a hefty blacksnake sidewinding itself across the grass at top speed and beneath the propane tank, thus winning that round.
• pull and dry the spring onions before they form heads.
• refill those clever little outdoor mouse-poison dispensers with green-turquoise blocks of mouse poison. They work; they've cut the indoor mouse war by 75 percent.
• approach the bluebird box to clean it. Yes, one must clean one's bluebird box. I didn't want to. Last time I looked, the nest held three baby chickadees and a baby bluebird. This is unusual. I feared finding the nest holding one or more dead. With gloved hands I unhooked the box and pulled out the nest. It was empty. Everyone had fledged! I was overjoyed.
• inspect the forest floor where the summer mushrooms grow. Despite an inch of rain, found nothing. It's still quite early in the season. On the way, saw butterflies enjoying the blossoming milkweed.
• check blackberry brambles for incipient blackberries, due in about three weeks. There are indeed little blackberry bullets. Last year's drought meant we had no crop. This year I hope for better.
• buy at the fruit and vegetable stand every sort of fresh tasty thing: beets, apples, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, berries, mushrooms, red onion, bananas, peppers, grapefruit, romaine -- to refill the fridge and to purify myself after two weeks away. And oh, yes, buy a bottle of wine, a rose, but I won't admit to that.
• clean the picnic table; apply a tablecloth.

All this activity was joyful. Give me a new computer stand and I'm in Eden! I'm so glad to be home, among the plants and creatures.

Jaws

Opening a drawer I found a fat mouse who'd shredded my gift wrap and done numbers one and two on a year's worth of greeting and birthday cards. I think only moms-to-be would be so sneaky, persistent, and destructive. They chewed through particle board into a cabinet, left piles of sunflower-seed hulls and dried beans on the mantel and in my shoes, and turds in my apron pockets. I wept. With weather cooler than normal for August I thought to bake a cake, light and not too sweet, and share it like a good Missourian, and opening the oven where pans are kept I saw enthroned in my cake pan a mouse nest clawed out of oven insulation with, fortunately, no mice in it. After my nausea passed (instead of baking, I hosed down all the pans and set the dishwasher on "sanitize"), I sent the landlord a photo and demanded he address in all seriousness the plague of mice I've had since spring. One or two in winter is normal in a country house. But five or ten in late summer, openly running along the baseboards: no. Worst in 14 years. So bad I stopped feeding the birds.

Enter Tim the handyman with the familiar blue Tomcat poison saying, "You just gotta hope they die outside," and when he set eight of these new kind of traps I wailed that these mice were too smart for traps, and he joked, "You just gotta get out the ol' .22." They're baited with a dollop of black gel -- the mice have been so bad I have two peanut butter jars, one for my mousetraps and one for me!! -- and one got caught along a major mouse thruway. With these I needn't touch the dead ones. Outside along the foundation Tim placed larger traps containing immense cakes of poison and said to refill them in two weeks. I said, there must be a hole there, why don't you find it and patch it up? Guess whose job that's gonna be.