Pest Control

In recent weeks, we’ve been finding evidence of mice: turds left on the food shelf, the countertop, on the stairs leading to the storeroom. I even saw our unwanted guest, streaking from the garbage to the safety of under the sink when I came into the kitchen.

We found a mouse trap, but it was either broken or too much for our little brains. We swept up the poop, moved the appliances to sweep up broken bits of rice or bread and wiped down every surface, packed up anything edible that might seduce a mouse and cleaned out the storeroom, tossing anything that might make a good nest.

Then late last week, ants invaded. We always have ants, lines of them marching around the bathtub, around the faucet and circling the drain of the sink in the kitchen. Any bits of food left on the counter will, within minutes, be surrounded by a frenzied group of ants trying to engineer its removal. Even smashed bugs will bring them out for a feeding frenzy, like the insect equivalent of vultures. We’ve been blasting them with sweet-smelling ant killer, only to find their brethren picking around their bodies a few minutes later.

This time, they were in all the usual places and climbing in furious columns up and down the kettle cord. Nothing new, we figured. We’re always finding ant bodies floating in our boiled water. They’re probably chewing up crumbs from the toaster, which sits beside the kettle.

Then we came home to a strange smell in the kitchen. Again, nothing shocking. Ghana’s power has gone wonky. Last week we had 48 hours without power and it appears that we’re headed for a similar week this week. (Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.) So everything in the fridge and freezer went off, including the fridge itself, for the third time in four months. We tossed all vegetables and meat, all dairy products and any leftovers.

But something stunk. I made a joke about our little mouse having died underneath the fridge. We packed up the garbage and went to bed.

But it was worse in the morning, floating in stinky waves, the concentration of it nearest the door. We were stumped. The garbage was empty, the fridge was empty, the kitchen was clean. So in the afternoon, while Emily was boiling water, I got sick of looking at these ants heading for the kettle and decided to clean out the toaster. I turned it upside down and shook out it. Out tumbled one or two crumbs and three or four mouse turds and I made a comment to Emily about how our little friend had been eating our crumbs.

I shook and shook, uprighted the toaster and peered inside. A big piece of burned toast was wedged in one of the slats, which explained the ants. And then, a stomach-turning thought. You know how you can look at a picture that’s supposed to be the silhouette of both an old hag and a young beauty, but you can’t see it until – suddenly – your perception shifts and the outline changes altogether? Slowly, slowly turned over the toaster. Looked in. And sure enough, the outline of a tail.

I dropped the toaster. “Oh. My. God. The mouse is in the toaster. He’s *in* the toaster!”

The little beast had obviously gotten hungry enough to climb into the toaster in search of a few scraps, then had either gotten wedged in there or been electrocuted. There was nothing to be done but thank the powers that be that he didn’t fall out when I was furiously shaking it and to remember back to the last time we’d made toast. (I brought baguettes back from Cote D’Ivoire, so it had been a while.)

The ants are carnivores: they were furiously tearing the dead mouse to bits.

I’m off to buy a new toaster.