Mouse Trappings
We have a new friend at Kiva Therapeutics- Priest Lake. I shall call him Mouse. My boyfriend met him first while I was in another room. He called my name tentatively “Jenny? How do you feel about mice?” My thoughts jump back to my childhood and the mice we had in our basement. We lived on the edge of town in a new development that afforded us many open fields to play kickball and tag in and lots of open space for field animals as well. So needless to say we had an array of creatures that found themselves in our basement and house. Crickets, frogs, mice, birds, mosquitoes and flies were all in my childhood house at various times and not always of their own free will. So to answer my boyfriend’s question- I have no problem with mice. I have seen many scurrying around and have even removed them from traps. I am not the sort of person you will find on top of a chair, screaming, with broom in hand waiting for somebody to take care of it. In fact when I met the mouse- or to be precise- the backend of it as it scurried out the kitchen door- I was amazed at the speed it could scurry.
What it comes down to is, when it comes to my home and food I am quite territorial. I don’t like uninvited animals breaking into my food and eating the food as if it were their own. I can tolerate critters-such as ants- scrounging for scraps on my picnic blanket, even rummaging through the garbage. But stay out of the cupboards and out of the containers on the countertops. You come into my house and you follow my rules- it is all about boundaries. So this morning when I repeatedly heard the sound of plastic rumpling I figured it was time to take action. The repeated rumpling of plastic was the sound of the mouse getting into the Oreo cookies we bought at the grocery store the day before. On some levels I am thankful to that mouse for getting into the Oreo’s and rendering them inedible…shhh don’t tell mouse-but it all comes down to the boundaries- no eating from the cupboards and countertops!
This mouse’s excitement over Oreo cookies, it made me ponder food. When we picked up the Oreo’s we each had one and then another and then another for a total of twelve maybe? That was the start of our Oreo kind of day. It was a strange addiction that I couldn’t quite get over. I would turn around and there the Oreo’s were….saying “eat me, eat me!” From the sounds of it the mouse was having the same experience. The plastic would rumple and the then it would go quiet. A few minutes later the plastic would rumple and then it would go quiet. At first we thought there was a draft that was pushing the plastic sheeting around. Nope! It was Oreo addiction. Lets look at the ingredients in Oreo cookies-mainly sugar. Sugar! I want a little sugar in my bowl
Yep across the board- all species love the sweet stuff in life. If we can’t produce it we go to great ends to obtain it, let’s face it. We need sugar for times of stress and extremes. We need it to survive cold and harsh elements out in the wilderness. er? When was the last time we were in the wilderness for months on end? We have all experienced the sugar addiction sensation at one point in our life. The irrational need to finish the sugary food that we are eating. The return to eating something that we know isn’t good for us but we crave it for some reason.
What stemmed our purchase of Oreo cookies was a trip to Walmart in rural Idaho to buy some household items. The minute we walked into the store our senses were overwhelmed with the sights, sounds and smells. The mental list we had compiled flew out the window and we lost sight of our mission as we meandered through the aisles trying to make sense of the arrangement. I am sure that to somebody the store layout made sense…to us it was a ramble of stuff that was made in China and reeked of plastic and chemicals. So at the end of our trip to Walmart we rewarded ourselves with a package of Oreo cookies. Sugar- another stimulant to add to the sights, sounds and smells of modern living. But looking at how my gut feels today I think it was more a penance. A sensory overload of sorts. Well- I guess it comes back to boundaries again. If I had respected the boundaries of my guts, I would have stopped at 3 or even 6! Not half the package. So today we all sit around groaning and trying to find the energy to move. Me, my boyfriend and our new pet mouse.