Winter of the Three Plagues

I often wake up early - around 4am - and have a cup of coffee before starting my day... Or sometimes I go back to bed for a few hours and sleep.

This morning I was starting to feel a little tired, after my coffee. I was on the verge of going back to bed, when the telephone rang... at 5 am.

I don't usually get 5 am calls, though my kids know my early morning habit and sometimes call if they are up.... But they're not usually up then, so I was surprised.

Hello.

On the other end of the line was one of my adult children who lives a five-hour-drive away in Toronto.. (I will refrain from naming names, as they like to remain anoymous...)

Mom, there is a mouse behind my stove... What should I do?

Do you mean right now or when it's daylight?

Right now.

Well, if I were you, I'd call your brother [who lives 2 blocks away] and then go over and spend the rest of the night over there - and then go buy some mouse traps in the morning...

But I want to stay here and watch and see where it goes. Besides, I can't sleep... Not now.

Then she proceeded to tell me how a strange rattling noise in her gas stove woke her up. She got up to investigate, fearing a gas leak. She peered in cracks all around the stove with a flashlight - and noticed a large clump of lint behind the stove - then saw that it had a tail... While she was trying unsuccessfully to take pictures of it (without her flash), it disppeared...

So for the next hour and a half we talked on the phone... while she kept an eye on her stove ... We talked about mice, mouse traps, the value of cats, how hard her winter has been so far - she has squirrels above her ceiling (that sometimes keep her awake with their scratching at night), she developed a mid-winter ant problem, which she may have resolved with ant bait...

I've been thinking about the plagues in Europe in the middle ages, she tells me... I feel like I'm living them...

I don't disagree...

I tell her about the dead mouse I once found in my school desk. I tell her about the time my cat brought in a live mouse to "show" me... We laugh ... and talk some more.

I don't tell her that when my cat jumped onto my bed and I realized that something was wriggling in its mouth, I screamed, jumped up, woke my apartment mate, jumped up on a chair and kept screaming until Hazel (the girl I shared an apartment with) opened the balcony doors - and chased the mouse out...

Some things are left unsaid...