My Hero!

If you live in New York City, you are bound to have an encounter with a mouse.  It doesn’t matter how clean you keep your place, eventually a mouse will find its way in.  In my neighborhood, there is a lot of new construction going up.  Houses are being torn down and apartment buildings are replacing them.  Within a three-block radius of my house, there are currently four new apartment buildings being built.  Needless to say, we have had an unwelcomed visitor or two.
 
Luckily for us, a friend of mine referred me to a great exterminator.  He came in late November, did what he needed to do, and we had been mouse free since then.  That was, until last week.  I was on my way home from work when I received the following text from my son: “Hi mommy, can you come home with mouse traps please?  There’s a mouse dying out in the open.  I caught it.”  I didn’t ask any questions.  I just bought the glue mouse traps.  Although, as I was walking home from the bodega, I did wonder how hard is it to catch a mouse that’s allegedly dying out in the open?  My next thought was, “Where exactly did this mouse choose to die?  And why did it have to die in the house?  It couldn’t wait until it made it back to its nest?”  Then, I thought about how I didn’t want to stumble upon it as I walked into the house.  So, I called my son to find out where exactly this mouse was dying.  He’s not yet an adult, but he gave me the typical “man” answer, which was basically not an answer to my question.  He just told me, “Don’t worry.  I’m downstairs.”  In my mind, I was thinking, “What the hell does that mean?”  So, I asked him again.  And I received the same response. Eventually, after restating the question several times, he finally told me that the half dead mouse was downstairs in the living room.  Man, I feel sorry for my son’s future wife.
 
When I get home, my son showed me how he “trapped” the mouse by creating a fence around it with my yoga mat.  I was not happy.  Now, I have to get a new yoga mat.  Anyway, the exterminator must have left some fast-acting poison in his mouse traps because from what I could see from the chair I was standing on, that mouse really was half dead.  It wasn’t moving.  My son used the mouse trap to pick up the mouse, disposed of it, and I climbed down off the chair.  My son was my hero.  I gave him a big hug and kiss and told him that I don’t know what I am going to do when he goes off to college.  He just smiled and told me that I would have to do it myself.  Yeah, I don’t think so.
 
I know by now you may be wondering what is the point of this story.  The point is this, when this kid goes off to college in August, I am going to need someone else to come over and take care of any other mice that find their way into my house!  My daughter definitely can’t do it.  That girl is terrified of mice.  Whenever she sees one, she screams so loud that she scares the poor mouse.  Then, she and the mouse have a race to see who can get out of the room the fasted.  I’m not exaggerating.  That actually happened. 
 
So, if you are like me, squeamish when it comes to mice, and you happen to live in New York City, you either need to have more than one son, get a cat, or have a good neighbor who will help you out.
                                   
So, now you know, and you can .... Consider Yourself Warned!
 
What things do you have your kids do that you don’t like to do?