Yesterday I was reading my email when a little brown something caught my eye. I looked over to the pillows by my air vent and saw a field mouse moving with purpose toward the water container I had placed there to try and get some moisture in the air. I saw Miss Mouse ( I always anthropomorphize animals I see) just as she saw me. Our eyes locked and she scurried back around the leg of the coffee table, under the writing desk, behind The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and disappeared behind my Grandmother's shapely divan. I got up to look for her but she had vanished as quickly as she had appeared.
Where had she come from? Where had she gone? Had she come in the day before when I had left the patio door in the next room open for some time while I was watering the plants? But if she had, how would she have gotten to the eighth floor? Had she been living all this time in my Christmas tree? It is now that I must confess that I have not yet taken down my gorgeous tree. It has petrified in place with it's all red decorations that are entirely appropriate for view until Valentine's Day.
Then I got this horrible thought; she was living in the bottom drawer of the linen chest. She was living in the drawer that I hadn't been able to open since I moved into the apartment over 4 years ago. She probably had a lovely nest with her babies and had lived there for years and for some reason she had just come out yesterday because it was such a dismal dark day that she had been confused into thinking it was night. She must be subsisting on the bird food that is thrown out by Franny and Zooey, the birds, with their messy habits. If I were to keep the bird detritus clean, I would have to be on 24 hour duty. As it is, I am doing good to sweep up once a day. I bet Miss Mouse has a deal with Missy Lu and Moonbeam that she won't bother them if they don't bother her. After I saw her, I took Moonbeam, the cat over to where she had run. Moonbeam just sniffed and looked at me like,"So what do you want me to do?" Missy Lu, the dog, was laying on the divan watching the whole thing take place. She never moved a muscle.
Anyway, I immediately called the Harbour Square Management office and reported my sighting. They promised to get right back to me. This being Harbour Square and the fact that our Maintenance scheduling has been taken over by a machine, I was given an appointment for resolution of a week from yesterday ( 6 February). I guess mice in the building are no big deal to HS Management. I found out about my scheduling from a form email I received late in the afternoon. I wish that Dolores, the wonderful lady who used to handle maintenance issues, was still here. I guess I will have to handle this problem myself. A good night's sleep always clarifies issues. So this morning I decided I would have to get the bottom drawer out of the linen chest.
The linen chest had originally been the changing table for my son, Luciano. I found it in a second hand store in Lawton, Oklahoma in the spring of 1982. It came covered in multiple layers of ugly paint but it was just the right height to change diapers and had 2 wide drawers and 2 small drawers at the top. I got it cheap, cheap, cheap. I used Formby's Paint and Poly Remover to get the paint off because it was supposed to be all natural and gentle for a pregnant person to use. It turned out to be the best thing I could have done. It turned out to have been a early American Cherry piece with inlay of a lighter wood and is probably one of my most important pieces. I always thought if Antiques Road show came here, I would take it to be appraised. But time has not been kind to the changing (linen) chest on four spindly legs. It got worm wood when we took it to Germany. One of it's legs got broken on the move from Kansas to Oklahoma. The final indignity came on the 18th and final move from 2038 Pierce Mill Rd NW, DC to here. The bottom drawer got jammed in so tight that I couldn't get it out.
This morning, I determined that I had to get that drawer out so I could see if Miss Mouse was nested there. First, I had to remove the top two smaller drawers. That was simple. I placed them on the Chinese bed in the next room. Then I got the middle wide drawer out and put it in the other room. The middle drawer is the same size as the bottom drawer. It is 37 3/8" across and 15" wide and 5" deep. Full of table cloths it was no mean feat to pull it out of the case. I accomplished it with some exertion There would be no way I would be able to get the bottom drawer out with the linens in place. Fortunately., the divider was partially gone. I could remove the remaining piece and see that Miss Mouse had not built a nest in the bottom drawer. In a way, I was kind of disappointed. I remember as a kid finding a mouse nest in the kitchen drawer at the farm and how upset my mother was. Would I have been as upset to find Miss Mouse this morning? Now my job became just another menial housekeeping job.
Later this afternoon, the Orkin guy came and decided that the mouse came from the air vents in the building and that mice are probably all over the place. Great...now I am breathing mouse and will probably get Hanta virus. And I thought my biggest problem was learning how to upload pictures to my blog.
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