They say that you can appreciate nature in the most mundane and/or unnusual places, but the last place I expected to see it was on my kitchen counter, reared up on its hind legs. Last night when we returned to the house after work and a stop at the grocery store, I entered my kitchen to plug in my cell. Out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement; I could not believe what I was seeing as I watched a mouse wiggle behind the airpot, like a truant middleschooler fleeing from his principal.

Naturally I did what any man worth his salt would do - I armed myself. Unfortunately on such short notice the best weaponry I could muster was a large carving fork and a pair of BBQ thongs. I stood poised with the fork in my left hand, pointed directly toward my adversary (or at least where I thought him to be) and the thongs raised to shoulder height in my right. I'm not exactly sure what my plans were with the thongs. I don't know if I would have tried to club him with them or to snatch him off the counter like some kind of white Mr. Miyagi, going after a fly with a pair of chopsticks. I realized that I must have looked like a very pathetic martial artist. Crouching tiger, hidden rodent.

I sent the wife around in a flanking manuever, in an attempt to flush out my prey. He popped out from behind a diaper bag and scampered head first down the front of the cabinets in an eerie defiance of gravity. He squeezed his fat little mouse butt in between the baseboard and the dishwasher and was gone before I could so much as bring down the thongs or take a poke at him with the carving fork. Clearly I was no match for him in hand-to-hand combat.

My wife and I silently ate our dinners, each coldly assessing the other's overabundance of piled-up crap around the house, wondering to ourselves if the other had somehow unwittingly been harboring this fugative. Money changed hands and I was dispatched out into the night to purchase some mouse-sized anti-personnel weapons.

At the supermarket I opted for some traditional snap-over mousetraps for the kitchen and a cheese wedge-shaped box of D-con for the crawlspace below. As I approached the checkout the cashier had to ask loudly if I had some mouse problems. "Not for long, I hope." A young woman nearby looked at what I was buying and asked in an annoyingly pained voice, "Omigosh, you're not going to kill them, are you?"

I don't consider myself as a person who leans to strongly to either the right or the left of the political spectrum. I'm as much for saving the whales and other endangered species as the next person. But when it comes to the common mouse, especially one that has taken up residence in my house, we are talking about the mammalian equivelent to a cockroach.

"God willing," I said.
"Ew! That's just so mean! Couldn't you just buy live traps and then let them go?"
I tried to think of some cleverly analogous war on terror slogan, but I could not.
"It's them or me," I shrugged.

I spent a good part of the night cleaning the kitchen, removing the unnecessary clutter and basically trying to make the place as unfriendly to mice as possible. I set the D-con in the crawlspace and before I went to bed I baited four traps with peanut butter and placed then along the baseboards of the cabinets near the diswasher, stove and fridge. The fourth I placed near the garbage in the mudroom.

I drifted off to sleep, listening for the "schw-ack!" of a trap but heard nothing. In the morning I found my adversary in the trap near the stove, killed cleanly. My first instinct was to quietly dispose of the corpse, but on second thought I gingerly carried the trap (by the unoccupied end) up to the bedroom. I poked my head in the door and told the wife that I got the mouse and asked her if she wanted to see it. To my suprise she did and was not at all squeemish about looking at it. All for the best, because seeing is believing and now she knows that I didn't just imagine that I got one.

With a partial night sleep behind me now I realize that most likely our little friend had been hibernating in our christmas tree when we brought it into the house and been our houseguest for the last month or so. As I sit here at work I keep telling myself that, and hoping to myself that he was a very, very lonely male bachelor. For the mean time we will keep the traps out just in case he had any immediate relatives.

And I will master the art of the BBQ Thongs & Carving Fork assault.

Labels: House

(This is an expanded version of the Eulogy that I delivered a week ago today.)

The Original North Dakota farm girl
You can take the girl off the farm, but you cannot take the farm out of the girl.

Eileen was probably the original North Dakota farm girl. Born in 1928, she was a child of the depression and knew what it meant to live simply and be content with what she had. She completed an eighth grade education and then left school work on the family farm full time. Because of this upbringing she always carried herself with an honest and down-to-earth demeanor, forged with a hard work ethic. She loved plants and growing things. Even after she moved to the city she maintained a large vegetable garden and planted flowers everywhere she could.

She was a WIFE
This North Dakota farm girl first met her husband-to-be in a field behind an M&H gas station, just after he had finished working on a tractor. Covered head to toe in grease Vernon hardly looked like the man of her dreams. They met again in Breckenridge. Eileen had caught a ride with her sister and watched a movie. She was killing time in the "Beer Blue Garden" waiting for her ride home when in walked that same brash little grease monkey. He made a beeline to her booth and tried to sit across from her. She put her foot up and blocked his advance. Always a practical woman, she only let him sit down next to her after she saw another fellow who she wanted to talk to even less start to make eyes at her. Their first real date came the following Saturday, when Vernon took Eileen to a dime store, bought her a rod & reel and took her fishing. Being ever the romantic sort he is, dad had also invited along his Uncle Henry. It must have been quite an outing, because three months later they were married.

Mom always loved being married to dad, and no piece of jewelry that she owned made her prouder than her wedding band. Last year at the nursing home she lost her wedding band and was very upset about it. This past Christmas my dad gave her a new one while she was in the hospital. Her trembling hands couldn't open the package and dad had to help her. As he guided the ring on to her finger he asked her if she would marry him again, "because the first time was so much fun." Even though she could not speak, the wonderful thing about true love is that in such times words are not needed. She knodded and accepted his proposal without a word. That ring became her one remaining peacock feather, which she strutted proudly for anyone who came through the doors of her room.

The three stones on the ring symbolize past, present and future.

She was a MOTHER
Like most North Dakota farm girls who lived through the depression, it's no real secret that my mother was a little bit of a packrat. Unused sheet sets from the 70's in her bedroom, shopping bags full of magazines from the 80's under the dining room table and cans of festal pumpkin pie filling dating back to the Eisenhower administration in the basement - This woman had it all. Yet for all of the stuff that she accumulated in her house, never once was there any doubt that to her the important things in life were not things. Her real treasure was her children. Time after time she would tell me, "I just love it when I have all six of my kids together!" This woman may have stockpiled Tupperware in her basement, but she surely stockpiled love in her heart. We had years and years of joyful family gatherings. If you examine the family pictures, you will see that Eileen loved a good laugh. Her smiles were the largest and her laughs were the loudest when all of us were together.

Part of her North Dakota farm girl wisdom was that not everyone that you love gets to grow old and sometimes you lose people before you are ready. In 1965 our house in Fridley was devastated by a tornado. It happened 3 years before I was born and still the stories from that event are so powerful that when I was younger and I heard them I could see the scenes so vividly that I actually thought that somehow I had been there. One particular story that stands out is that for a short period of time Cheryl was lost to us - She had been visiting a friend and somehow ended up at a church where my parents eventually found her. Every time my mother would tell that story you could see her emotions seeping out around the edges, and it was as if she had lost and then found her little girl all over again. When I first started reading the bible and read the story of the prodigal son, the father's reaction of joy and humility made perfect sense to me, because I had already seen it in practice.

If there was any wisdom, any knowledge that I could presume to speak to you on my mother's behalf, it would be this: Tell each other that you love each other now. Don't wait another day to tell someone how you feel about them. Tomorrow might not ever come, and "Someday" is not a day of the week. We are all like morning dew drops, that are burned away by the sun. Don't cheat the people you love out of your tender feelings by burying them behind a gruff exterior. The opportunity may never come again. Nor should you squander it on pride or grudges that cause division among you. Set those things aside and focus on the things in life that really matter.

(There were several readings offered by my brothers and sisters that I won't post here out of respect for their privacy.)

She was a GRANDMOTHER
If us kids are mom's crown, then her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are her crown jewels. These are the children that she was able to spoil without worrying about having to change them or put them to bed, although many times she did. She loved to watch the little ones grow and develop.

(There were several readings offered by the granddaughters that I won't post here out of respect for their privacy.)

I would like to conclude this eulogy by saying that in addition to all else, during her lifetime Eileen's North Dakota farm girl wisdom also afforded her a faith in God. She confessed with her mouth that "Jesus is Lord," and believed in her heart that God raised him from the dead, and as such was saved. She trusted in him and was never put to shame, for "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Eileen is no longer a North Dakota farm girl, because she was only passing through this world. She is now in her permanent home, in Heaven. Revelation chapter 21 describes Heaven as being a new city, made from pure gold. Something inside me thinks that my mother passed by those streets of gold to instead walk in a beautiful garden with the Lord.

Because you can take the girl off the farm, but you cannot take the farm out of the girl.

Labels: Life, Mom

A warm thanks to everyone who reached out to our family during the visitation and funeral last week.

This week we find ourselves trying to get back to "Normal" -- Whatever that means.

I for one have lost a wise and trusted advisor and in that much things will never be the same again.

It was overwhelming to see how many lives my mother has touched.
I am grateful to all of you for making a difference in Eileen's life as well as my own.

Thanks again and God Bless.
Terry

Labels: Life, Mom