Squeamish. It’s the only word I can think of to aptly describe the way I felt when I opened the cupboard door and saw that little gray mouse.

Irked would have been the word if he’d been alive. But he wasn’t. And I felt squeamish at the decomposing sight of him.

A certain smell had alerted me, and I knew that somewhere in there I would find him. But there’s always that sense of dismay when you do. Find him.

I try not to be a squeamish person. It doesn’t fit with life on Vashon Island. It doesn’t fit with having a teenage son. And it certainly doesn’t fit with the time of the year that the mice move in.

But there he was. And there I was. Not only did Mr. Mouse require removal, but this circumstance meant a complete investigation of the entire shelf. Lest you know for a fact what kind of housekeeper I am, suffice to say that this is my holiday baking cabinet, and it doesn’t get regular use. How many recipes call for red and green sparkly sugar?

Nevertheless, as of this writing, everything is now in tins and plastic containers. But last week when I got ready to make those little teacake cookies, I found nibble holes in the powdered sugar bag and the two plastic bags around it. Needless to say, another mouse found another cabinet. No cookies were baked.

Let me digress a bit to say how relieved I was to find the mouse. I am aware of its larger cousins around my domain. A couple times of year, my husband goes “under the house,” our euphemism for baiting the big traps. He claims that of all his many jobs, this is the worst.

I won’t go into details, but I agree with him, and that’s why I don’t complain about doing the toilets in a household that’s mostly male.

Last year we used a guy who called himself an eco-exterminator. I asked him how many rats were living in our front bank, thinking he would say, maybe 10. “Hundreds!” he boomed enthusiastically. I was glad my area isn’t what he called, “the worst on the island.” You know who you are, and I don’t have to write it in the paper.

It’s also amazing how squeamish off-Islanders are about the whole thing. We all know you simply deal with it. So off I went to the Great Provider (also known as Thriftway) to deal with it, and what do I see? Perhaps the greatest invention since the mousetrap, the Tip-Trap Live Capture Mousetrap.

I admit, it appealed to my karmic side, such as it is. Yet the traditional trap with that no nonsense whacker called to my need to bake cookies. So. I took the last one of each. The Tip-Trap is waiting outside the bakery shelf. The traditional trap, inside.

If I am successful, the second worst job in the house will be waiting for my husband. And whether I’m successful or not, he will get cookies.

— Margaret Heffelfinger is a freelance writer, artist and mother who lives on Vashon.