I want to preface this post by commenting that I know that I am the least practical person in the world. A practical person recognizes that vermin are vermin and should not be in your house. Needless to say, this story is about me doing the opposite.
So I have been living in the new place for a month or so now. It is a partition of my host family’s largest house and I moved into it for the winter because the soba (wood burning stove) works better in here than the one in the casa mica where I was all summer. It is a bedroom with a small entryway/hallway outside of it leading to the door to the outside. It is maybe half the total size of the casa mica where I was living all summer. I sleep, cook, and do laundry all in the same room because there is still no running water so I haul it in from the well. This has actually been really nice because the house, while still about 20 or 30 years old, is much, much newer and in better shape than the over 100 year old casa mica where I was all summer.
That all being said, though, the house has its structural faults. Moldovans tend to build the houses in the villages themselves and I have never seen nor heard from any other volunteer about any Moldovan ever building a “real” foundation to their house. They just kind of build the houses on the ground. Consequently, after only a few years, the houses start to shift on the uneven ground and end up with cracks in the walls, holes in every corner leading directly under the house and, most telling, doors that won’t close properly. I swear, it seems like no doors in Moldovan villages close all the way or will lock properly because the slight shifting of the houses warps the doorframes and makes it impossible to close them after only a year or two.
So despite the new house being newer, all these structural idiosyncrasies are in play. There are cracks in some of the walls, a few in the floorboards behind my cupboards, and the door doesn’t close all the way. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, this naturally means that I have furry little visitors now and then.
In the old house, the kitchen was a separate room closed off by a door that actually latched shut, so I did not get too many mice in the room where I slept because there was nothing for them to do there and it wasn’t any warmer there than it was outside in the summer. Now, though, all my stored food is in the same room with me in cupboards and no matter how well you clean up after cooking, they can somehow smell is and want in. In addition, it is chilly here now and I make fires at night, meaning that it is infinitely warmer in here than it is outside, giving them further reason to want to come in.
So I hear a lot of scuttling around at night. Which, honestly, does not bother me too much. Spiders are my big fear, and I had hamsters as pets when I was a kid, so rodents don’t really bother me. The only time I care that they are in the room is when they are loud while I’m trying to sleep.
So one night, about a week ago, I laid down to go to sleep and proceeded to lay wide awake for at least an hour listening to a bunch of super loud rustling around going on right near my head. I was thinking about it and finally determined that it was coming from the cupboards where I store bread, potatoes and onions. So finally, I got up, turned on the light, took a deep breath and threw open the cupboard door.
At first I saw nothing, just the food there. I felt sure that something had been in there, though, so I poked a few bags, moved an onion or two around to see behind them, and found nothing. Then, all of a sudden I saw him. This little brown mouse was clinging like a mountain climber to the stack of clean towels I keep in the cupboard, looking at me like a deer in the headlights but keeping perfectly still. I almost didn’t see him.
At this point, I should say, I was really irritated because I just wanted to sleep and dealing with vermin in your house at midnight is not my idea of a nice night. And the second I saw him, I couldn’t help but think of all those old movies where women scream and freak out at the sight of a mouse and don’t know what to do. My reaction was a little different.
I almost died because he was so cute. I started laughing and that made him run behind the towels squeaking, which I thought was even cuter. Knowing that I should be trying to find a way to kill him, I instead started looking for a way to trap him so I could look at him some more. I managed to shoo him into a Tupperware container and get the lit on it. I then proceeded to giggle at how cute he was, running around in the Tupperware trying to figure out what was going on. I realize the ridiculousness of the situation. But seriously, you guys. He was SO cute!
Finally, after I’d jostled him enough, I took him outside and released him, squeaking, into the frigid night. Then I went back to bed in peace. The sad thing, though, is while I don’t necessarily like the idea of mice running around in my house, there is a part of me that really wants him to come back.
Noapte Buna!
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