Unwelcome House Guests

It's that time of year when the local rodents start looking for someplace warmer to live. A few of them decided that place should be our attic - particularly the part of the attic right above our bedroom.

After a decade of chronic sleep deprivation, I get pretty testy about having my sleep interrupted unnecessarily. Between my children and my pager, I have pretty regular sleep disturbances. Those are at least for a good reason. Being kept up at night by the pitter patter of mouse feet above my head, on the other hand, is not something I am about to tolerate. So B graciously went out to secure some D-con. He's a good man.

The experience reminded me of a time when I was around junior high age. We had some mice in our house, and Dad was putting out some D-con for them. Since those mice weren't keeping me up at night, I was more compassionately inclined toward them. I was pretty upset that Dad was going to poison the poor little mice. He explained to me that D-con does not in fact kill the mice; it just makes them really thirsty so they leave the house and go look for water.

I actually believed that for years. In fact, it wasn't until I was in med school in a pharmacology lecture that I was shocked to hear the professor say that D-con was warfarin. I realized then for the first - and only - time in my life that my father had lied to me! (Although one of the very early signs of hemorrhagic shock is thirst. Yeah, I'm sure that's what Dad meant.)

B chose to take a more forthright approach with our son on the issue. (Or perhaps it was the picture on the box that gave it away.) J watched Daddy placing the D-con in the attic last night. This morning, he asked if we had heard any mice during the night. I told him no, that I thought they'd probably eaten the snacks Daddy left and then taken a nap. To which he replied, "And maybe while they were taking a nap they got Killed!"

Apparently he's a little better prepared for the harsh realities of life than I was.