Patrick Butler: Another Look

How was your week? Mine was OK. The poison ivy covering 30 percent of my body with a nasty red rash subsided. Then electricians fixed the breaker box buzzing on and off like an electric chair in old Frankenstein movies.

But when the rats fell on my head, I’d just about had it.

“God,” I said, shuddering after falling off the attic ladder when the rodents ran into my hairline and returned to the storage box I was hauling down, “I’ve just about had it.”

As I lay on the floor where I’d fallen, itching like mad, I considered my life. I wasn’t about to get back up and have something worse happen, if that were possible. Just then Janet walked in with a phone to her ear.

“The car broke down again,” she said. “It won’t start. We just had it fixed yesterday.”

“Rats,” I said.

“You said it,” she said walking away, talking in the phone. If she only knew.

At times like this I wonder what God may be trying to teach me? Don’t go up into the attic? Don’t live in a house wired by Mickey Mouse when building codes were basically blown off? And what about the rats?

I sighed. Janet came back in.

“Why are you resting on the floor?” she asked. “Why aren’t you taking boxes out of the attic? The man is coming to fix the leaky air conditioner. I’m so hot I could die.”

“Rats,” I grunted.

“You said that before. Is this, like, a secret message?” she asked.

“There are rats in our closet,” I sighed, hauling myself up on one elbow. “I fell off the ladder when they jumped from a box I was carrying down.”

Janet stepped back, genuinely alarmed.

“In our closet?” she said with wide eyes. “My clothes!”

“Don’t worry, I’m OK,” I said a bit peevishly. “I’ll probably have to go back to rehab for six months, but I should be fine.”

“What did you do?” she asked, bending over and peering into my face

“Well, I twisted my back at about L-3, L-4 and…”

“No, I mean, what did you do when you saw the rats?” she said. “How many were there?”

I stared in disbelief. “They jumped on my head.”

“Focus honey,” Janet said impatiently. “How many rats?”

I sighed and said, “Actually, I only saw one.”

“One rat,” she said nodding. “How big?”

“Well, it might have been a mouse, actually. But it looked pretty big as it went screaming towards my eyeballs,” I said, trying to sound serious.

“You’re so dramatic,” Janet said, closing the closet door, trapping the rat/mouse inside.

That night we could hear the mouse in the closet making noises like manic construction workers ripping out drywall without mercy

“Get that mouse, please honey,” she said and turned over.

The next day while Janet was timidly getting clothes for church, the mouse jumped out at her. It was huge, she said, panting.

“See, I told …” I said.

“Get that mouse now,” she interrupted.

So with a buttoned long-sleeved shirt, socks over my pant cuffs, a straw hat and a baseball bat, I went in literally itching to do battle with the mouse. Searching through clothing, behind books or what-nots in the 90-degree closet, I finally flushed the vermin out.

It was huge and hopping around like popcorn in a popper. I noticed its first hop was right at me. I swung for the fence and the critter was in the history books.

“Patrick Mouse-Slayer,” my wife said admiringly as she surveyed the still form of a 15-inch-long-tailed mouse. “My hero.”

Just then, two more popcorn mice leaped out. Janet yelled and yanked the door shut, trapping — I mean leaving — me inside. I began crashing about the closet, swinging and slamming into everything as I went for the mouses. Soon they were dispatched. Janet peered around the door into the chaotic closet.

“Why don’t we sanitize the closet now that it’s nearly empty?” she said.

So we got coffee and slowly, calmly cleaned out the closet, chatting as we went. Suddenly and without warning, a fourth mouse sprang up. I had a cardiac while Janet ran screaming from the closet, slamming the door. I was alone with ET, but not for long. I sent it home. Then we cleaned and scrubbed the closet until nightfall.

That night an exhausted Janet was philosophical about the four hidden mice.

“It’s like when God cleans the big problems out of your life,” she said, “and you think you’re fine but really there’s a mouse still there living where you can’t see it. God has taken care of the big problems in life, the major sins, but now it’s the little things hiding in the back of the closet that will leap out at you when you least expect it.”

“Go on,” I said, furiously scribbling notes. “This is good.”

“And the effort we made to get the mice and clean the closet,” she said, “is the effort God wants us to make finding those little things still lurking inside. It’s hard, but,” — and then motioning to the almost new looking and sparkling clean closet said, “it’s worth it.”

Patrick Butler
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