We all have something in our world that gives us the creeps. Something that makes your hair stand on end, or gives you the chills, or possibly makes you sick to your stomach when you think about it. In fact I think most of us have several things that cause that kind of reaction. Think nails on a chalkboard or being outside alone in the dark after watching a scary movie and knowing deep down inside that there is someone coming up behind you. It doesn’t matter how many times you look and see that there’s no one there, you’re still seriously creeped out. For many it’s probably spiders, and snakes, and insects or the like. Some very manly men throw caution to the wind and scratch chalkboards on purpose while eating spiders, and snakes, and insects, outside and alone in the dark. They are not without their own set of horrors though. The thing that creeps them out is probably something more along the lines of commitment in a relationship or doing the dishes by hand. It doesn’t even need to be big things like venomous snakes and murderers. My husband is creeped out and sicked out by burgers from a certain hamburger chain that will go unnamed. Every single time he has eaten at that particular restaurant he gets very sick. We don’t know why, but I have two theories: either they are lacing their meat with salmonella, which seems like an odd choice for a marketing campaign...but a possibility nonetheless, OR he unluckily got sick after eating their burger once and ever since has experienced visceral PTSD. Either way, it’s his thing.
My thing, on the other hand, is lentils. You may think that’s crazy and ridiculous, but I’m telling you that lentils are creepy and sinister. They look innocent enough, but they are out to get me. They literally give me the chills, and when catching me at an unstable moment, have been known to make me dry-heave at the sight of them.
I haven’t always been this way. In fact, just last year, one of my favorite things to make for dinner was lentil stew. I hate running out of basic foods that I use often, so frequently I buy non perishable food like beans and rice in bulk and store them downstairs in our storage room. Due to their super healthy status and my accumulation of great lentil recipes, I had acquired quite the stash of lentils downstairs. That accumulation is what led to the lentil horror of 2013……….
Living in the country is peaceful, beautiful, and serene. There are few things better than the nearness of pastures of cows and horses grazing to make you feel like all is right with the world. There is a dark side, however, to empty fields in close proximity to your house...mice. When you combine country fields with five children who can’t possibly comprehend that the door should stay shut throughout the summer, and the lack of a cat on the premises due to allergies, what do you get????
Hickory dickory dock! That’s what you get!
This is the part now where I insert all of the self explanations and pleadings about how I’m not filthy and how it’s not like there are constantly mice in my house and how I’m not filthy and HOW I’M NOT FILTHY! Please don’t think that...I beg of you. I’m traumatized enough as it is. It is what it is, though, and about it I must tell...because telling is what I “do”. So, in the eight years we have lived here, we’ve had one or two mice get in during each summer that we have to catch. That’s not so bad is it?!? I’m still a decent person who’s relatively put together...right? Only one or two…that is until 2013.
It all started normally enough with a single mouse sighting, the accustomed screaming that accompanies it, and a dispersal of mouse traps in all the usual places. No big deal. Shortly thereafter a carcass was found in the trap and disposed of. Problem (usually) solved. Not this time.
Another sighting. More traps were immediately dispersed. No carcass. Day after day, no carcass. Another sighting and then another! No dang carcass. We knew we had a clever little mouse on our hands. Finally a body was found!! I cheered and sighed a heavy sigh of relief that it was over and we were rodent free...which is how I prefer to live my life….BECAUSE I’M NOT FILTHY!
My joy was not to last, though, for shortly after my relief came it fled due to……. another…... sighting! This was inexcusable! I immediately tripled the traps and became an official mouse hunter rather than a passive trap layer. I tried to think like the mouse...to be the mouse. I searched the house from top to bottom. In my searchings, I found my lentil stash to be nearly gone and assumed that the mouse had eaten all my lentils. I threw out all the rest of them and put everything into containers so the little varmint couldn’t get into anything else. I was pathological about not leaving any food out ANYWHERE in the house. I thought that if I did a better job of starving it that maybe it would be more prone to sample the fine array of delectable treats attached to our various deadly traps. (Cue the maniacal laughter.)
Finally two weeks later we caught him and all was right with the world.
Until the next day when there was another sighting!
After Alan talked me down from putting the house up for sale we went to work doubling the amount of traps. Again. More pathological cleaning...more searching. At last we caught it. Another sighting! This was not to be tolerated!!! I thought about our options:1.“If Alan won’t let me sell the house...I could burn it…radical, but not out of the question. 2. I could become a Hantavirus survivor/expert and travel the country speaking to elementary kids about the importance of closing the door in the summer. 3. I could let more vermin in and charge people money to come into my “ZOO” and pet them.” I could certainly use the money.
It was at this point in the “game” that I started finding them...the lentils...scattered throughout my house. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so creeped out in the first place by the fact that we were on our fifth rodent and I had no idea how many more there might be. I was sickened by the thought of all of them scurrying throughout my house and POOPING EVERYWHERE!!! I’m not really into poo, so the thought of it being scattered throughout my house...even in tiny increments...grosses me out. Even worse than the spectre of the imagined poo were the insidious little lentils. I can’t explain why. It makes no sense, but to me they were like tiny foul messages left just for me to find. Like a pernicious stalker was hiding in my house placing the nasty things for the sole purpose of haunting my dreams...and haunt my dreams they did. One night I woke up horrified and sweaty because I dreamed that I was awake and my hair was all ratted. As I sat up and tipped my head to the side to feel my ratted hair, hundreds of lentils poured out of my hair all over the bed. I could suddenly feel the mice scurrying around in my hair, ratting it and depositing those forbidding lentils!!
I suppose the mouse found the lentils and decided to hide them in different places throughout the house as its own form of food storage. Perhaps we had a case of Ratatouille on our hands. I didn’t care how “natural” or unnatural it was for the mouse to carry lentils in its mouth and deposit them all over my house. The lentils had turned this mousehunt into something very sinister and repulsive. One night Emma heard a trap go off in the middle of the night followed by the sounds of something thrashing and flinging the trap around...did I mention that this trap was actually a RAT trap?? She said that whatever was in it sounded huge. By the time we got there it was gone and the trap was empty. Now I was REALLY freaked out. Not only was it leaving threatening lentil messages...but it was a giant. Ever heard of R-O-U-Ses??
I started finding lentils EVERYWHERE and every time I found them I battled nausea and deep shudders. Finally, after about a month and a half, we triumphed and caught it! After several days of celebration we were able to get back to normal life. It turned out that it was the fifth and the last of all the rodents. Thank goodness. It wasn’t huge either...just your typical mouse. I’m pretty sure, though, that it was twisted.
In the many months since the mouse skirmishes of the summer I have continued to find those disquieting lentils. I have found them in dark corners, on closet shelves, and in cupboards. When we got the christmas decorations out they were all intermingled with lentils. I had to put a sweater on because it gave me the chills...literally. Just last week I was cleaning the bathroom and pulled a roll of paper towels down from the closet shelf. Lentils fell out of the paper towel roll. I fought down the sudden queasiness. The worst one of all, though, was when I went to get the kids’ boots out of storage for the winter. As I picked up each boot, I noticed one boot felt heavier than the others. I tipped the boot upside down and thousands of lentils poured out of it. I was suddenly the star of a horror movie with shrieking music playing in the background and lentils falling in slow motion out of that boot as I staggered backward, ashen faced, slowly waving my hand as if trying to sweep the heinous scene from before my wide eyes.
As I anticipate the summer that will inevitably come I am thinking that maybe we should consider investing in a few things: a screen door that will close automatically, a bald cat (so we have the benefits of a mouse catcher without the allergies), and, if I can find it, a few sessions with a therapist that specializes in trauma surrounding the bean which shall not be named. One thing is for sure --- we will not be having lentil stew anytime soon. Actually, forever.
