Let me make this perfectly clear, I have nothing against Mickey Mouse.
Everyone likes Mickey, who has always appeared to be a fine character, even though his boss is cheap and didn’t pay very well. Disney once sent me a bill for 36 cents, saying they had overpaid me for an illustration I created for them! After a year of receiving this bill every month and ignoring it, I finally put 36 pennies in an envelope and mailed them their money. That was the end of my working for the “Happiest Place on Earth.”
Unfortunately, Mickey’s relatives in our neck of the woods are not as nice as old Mickey. They have cost me a pretty penny recently, and it is not the first time.
Recently, driving down the highway, I turned my headlights on, as I usually do on a cloudy day, when suddenly my horn started blowing, the windshield washers started spraying, and the wipers began swiping back and forth. What the heck!? I turned the lights off and tried again. Same thing. I’m not one to swear, but a truck driver gave me a thumbs-up as he passed, hearing the nasty words that were spewing out of my mouth because I knew what the problem was. Off to my favorite garage.
As I suspected, my mechanic said Mickey’s country-mice cousins, who reside in our garage during the winter, had overstayed their welcome and have appeared to have eaten the wiring in my dashboard, causing a short circuit, setting off the blowing, spraying and swiping. It is not the first time Mickey’s cousins have cost me money.
After recovering my truck from three days in the shop, I have resumed my annual mouse hunt. I have enough mouse traps spread around the garage to trip up a bear, but the little devils just ignore them. I know because we set up a camera and watched them dancing around the traps. I bought one of those electronic thingies that claim to emit a sound that purports to hurt the critters’ ears and chases them away.
Not!
I have seen the little buggers gather around the device and enjoy the concert. I even tried a bucket of water with a ramp, hoping they’d take a swim. No luck. I have filled every hole I can find in the garage, but mice can squeeze through an opening the size of a dime.
I have consulted every article on Google to find a solution. The best experts can suggest is spraying peppermint oil around the garage and the vehicles, which I have been doing religiously for months, purchasing gallons of the brew at great cost. Supposedly, the tiny monsters hate the smell. Apparently not.
Some say the cause of this problem is that automakers use soy-based wiring in their vehicles. The little rodents apparently feast on soy. Others say this is a myth with which I tend to agree. They also attacked my wife’s new car, eating much of the wiring and all the foam padding under the back seat. That little feast cost my insurance company $2,000 and me another $500 to cover the deductible.
I have avoided putting poison down because I don’t want to harm the cats and bunnies that visit the yard or to call an expensive exterminator. Maybe old Mickey Mouse, whom I have always spoken well of despite his boss’s stinginess, could encourage his rodent relatives to move to sunny Florida or at least send me 36 cents to begin replenishing my mice-control budget. Eh, probably not.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado