Columns see more »

I guess men scratching or spitting and women screaming have no rhyme or reason but I do know its something both do and maybe without thinking, instinctively maybe. I see it and I hear it. I have never asked a man why he scratches or spits but I do know when I scream, whether it’s from fright or an exclamation of happiness, that I do it and therefore I think it is an auto response of some kind. I guess men itch or maybe just ‘checking’ on things on their person, like I said I don’t ask why in this case. Mostly I think they spit just because they can. My oldest grandson in his 10 or 12 year old baseball pitching days had a great windup that included a spit! I guess he thought to be a pitcher one had to spit. I wonder if I should ask him now that he is 34 why he spit and maybe now his kids spit for no reason. How about it Patrick?

I found an old story from some years back on this subject and upon reading it I thought I could take some of it out and add some newer things and have a column for this week. Here is the relevant and new part of the story. I have been finding traces of what I think was a mouse in residence in my Toyota and was at work having its dinner in my SUV. I often keep a cracker or two or even a piece of candy in my car in case my blood sugar level drops and I need some carbs quickly. I reached in my glove box to get something else out and Pat was driving but he saw a piece of a cracker in the glove box and he said to me, “You should throw out that half eaten cracker.” Well it wasn’t a half eaten cracker when I put it there I remembered and I said that to him. I did dispose of it and the wrapper was not just torn apart by me but gnawed on by this mouse and it had scattered tiny flakes of paper there in the box.

I didn’t think much more about it but I also had one of those little bitty suckers, I think they call them DumDum’s, that I was saving for one of the twins, Maddy or Katie. One morning I opened the door to my vehicle and there on the floor were tiny bits of a white sucker stick, however the candy part was on the back seat undisturbed but not where I had left it and just about a half inch of the sucker stick was left on the head of candy. Ah Ha! Next day the sucker was gone and the bit of stick as well. It had to be a mouse.

The last time something like this happened it was happening to the glove box in Pat’s truck. He had mentioned to me that a mouse had run across his foot while he was driving and he wanted me to get him a couple of mouse traps for his truck. I said to him in the next breath I took that until he had a dead mouse to show me I would not be riding in his truck. I will say right here that I am not what you call afraid of mice, but I just cant handle them scampering across my feet or anywhere else. Do you think even big brave men would just sit still ( as a mouse) and let a mouse run hither and yon without moving…I don’t think. I have this big burly macho son in law that some of you know, Donnie Garrett, and it would ‘lock him up’, in his vernacular, if that happened to him. Had this happened to me while I was driving you probably would be attending my funeral because I would have driven headlong into traffic or a tree, a cow, or whatever if a mouse had run across my foot.

I do think there is a mouse in my car as I speak so Pat put a trap in and nothing happened but maybe this mouse didn’t care for cheese but had a liking for candy suckers and crackers, who knows? I think he ought to set another one. I have recently found a tiny nest the mouse has made so I guess we need to put the trap in the glove box the next time we set one.

When Pat set the trap in his truck those many years ago, in no time at all he had a mouse by its dead neck but it wasn’t happening for me. I really hesitate to drive my Toyota until we catch the mouse because I won’t stay locked up inside with a mouse running rampant. It won’t do any good for me to scream if one gets loose while I am driving, there will be no one there to hear me. Pat always says I will give him a heart attack when I scream no matter what the cause of the scream is, it scares him and I can no more NOT scream than men can NOT scratch when they itch or spit when they want to do it. It is just a response that women have and I guess the same for these men.

Another time we had a problem with a long cardboard tube that something had been wrapped around but had lain too long on the porch. Apparently a mouse family had ‘rented’ it for a bit. I was up on the swinging bed taking my leisure and reading a book when the dogs started to bark and run at the tube. I was afraid a snake had slithered into it and when I kicked at it nothing happened so I very gingerly picked up one end of the tube and looked through the other end (thank goodness) and out popped a couple of mice at the other end. Our dogs don’t kill mice but they chase them and if caught they play with them till they die a slow death. Again I guess animals have things they do instinctively too, just like human men and women.