Yesterday I was in the office working and I heard Boyfriend walk in. Seconds later he was shouting “Maybe! Brick! MAYBE!! BRICK!! Get in here!” 

I walked into the kitchen to see what the commotion was about and Boyfriend barked at me “Your dogs don’t listen! There was a mouse in the kitchen! I called them, but they didn’t come”

Smugly, I stared at Boyfriend and said “ssshht!”  Immediately both dogs appeared in the kitchen anxious to see what needed to be killed. “You just don’t speak their language” I quipped.

I interrogated Boyfriend on this supposed mouse; where did it come from?  How big was it?  And, most importantly, where did it go?  He said it ran under the stove, I shrugged, about to turn back to the office because, while others seem to constantly forget, I work from home. Keyword, “”work!””

“Do you want to pull the stove out?” Boyfriend asked, almost disappointed by my lack of interest.  I looked to Brick, and asked him to tell me where the mouse went.  Obediently Brick sniffed around the cabinets and agreed with Boyfriend that the mouse did run under the stove.  “Yea, I guess, just pull the drawer out.”  Boyfriend starts to tell me how hard it is to get the drawer out, but it dropped pretty quick and both dogs immediately dove into the void.

As they took turns squeezing in and out of the hole left by the drawer, they dragged out every dust bunny and escaped rice grain that had been living under there, probably since the stove was installed eight years ago. My head started to slowly pulse and I pointed out the mess being made and suggested Boyfriend retrieve the vacuum before it’s scattered all around the house.

Brick doesn’t like the vacuum and took his leave while Maybe continued to sniff every inch of the toe kick to see if the rodent had somehow escaped while Boyfriend vacuumed around her.  It was now 2 o’clock and I was running out of time to get the chili going if we were going to ever eat dinner.  Unable to source the location, Maybe went out back to see what Brick was up to while Boyfriend crawled around on the floor looking for a hole or a crack.  I had just turned to go back to my computer when Boyfriend shouted “There he goes! Where are your damn dogs? Sht! Sht! Sht!”

Maybe must’ve heard Boyfriend spitting all over the kitchen and she popped back in to see if he was having a stroke. With a playful tone he scolded her for not being there to grab the mouse before it went under the fridge, it was almost condescending the way she wagged her tail at him in reply.

Boyfriend explained his next plan, he was going to pull out the fridge and I was to command my dogs to grab the mouse when it came running out.  Because I’m of good humor, I agreed, asking Maybe to stand on the left and Brick on the right, while I perched on the counter with my cell phone ready to record.

As Boyfriend pulled the fridge out of its cubby, a draft caught a ball of dust and it whooshed out to the floor. Brick pounced, slammed his teeth into it and ran it outside to finish it off.  I laughed, told him he was a very good boy! and asked Boyfriend if that was his mouse.  He was not amused by my mockery, and he was less amused that no wild mouse had run forth.

Being a well-trained Boyfriend he dragged the vacuum into the fridge hole and sucked up the remaining dust mess, noticed a small hole in the sheetrock and said “Aha! He went into that hole!”  He then raced out to the garage to find the tools to fix, or plug, or cover, or do something to the hole.

As soon as the garaged door slammed behind him, I asked Maybe, “Is the mouse in that hole?”  She sniffed around a second and pointed her nose to a gap between the floor and the wall that likely ran the length of the wall, behind the base cabinets. I turned to Brick and I asked him the same and he also alerted to the small gap. 

Boyfriend came clamoring back in the house with an armload of tools and proceeded to pile them on the kitchen floor, between the two toe kicks that had been pried off and lay with nails facing up, the hose of the vacuum and the cord that Brick kept tripping over as it hung from the plug over the counter.

“It’s not in the hole” I said.

“What! Of course it’s in the hole!” Boyfriend argued.

Maybe, who had tired of the excitement, was laying, ironically, on the anti-fatigue mat in front of the sink. I asked her again to please find the mouse.  With a bit of a huff she got up, squeezed between Boyfriend and the fridge and pawed at the crack in the floor.  “Impossible!” Boyfriend shouted. The pulse in my brain had grown stronger so I stepped out back while he worked on plan B? C?

He again called for the dogs so I went in to see where the mouse had run to now but found Boyfriend on the floor with the flashlight staring into the gap under the dishwasher, because apparently, we’re pulling that apart now, too.  My kitchen looked like it was halfway through demo, my headache was picking up speed and it was now almost 4o’clock.  So, I announced “It’s time to put the kitchen back together and order DoorDash!” 

You may think I’m a not-so-nice girlfriend, but you see, these are my dogs – I have watched them kill hundreds of vermin in the yard.  I not only know how they work; I know how mice work and I know nobody is killing a mouse in the kitchen. 

Tomorrow I will spend the day scrubbing down whatever dust particles made their way onto the counters, and time allowing, perhaps I’ll even make chili.