女人与老鼠的“恩怨情仇”

I am not afraid of much. I have hiked through

the Andes and the Himalayas, 1)zip-lined through a Mexican jungle, driven on motorcycles far too fast. I have given birth to three children and beaten off two separate 2)muggers 3)intent on 4)grabbing my purse. I have jumped out of a moving car to avoid a man.

Why, then, am I afraid of mice?

Recently, I came up here to 5)Prince Edward Island to open up our summer home. Not surprisingly, I had a special greeter on the front stairs: a 6)tiny gray mouse, a little 7)bitty guy who was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I tried to stay calm and 8)rational. But, since my husband wasn’t here, I had to deal with the 9)intruder myself.

“Get me a pan with a lid and a broom!”I yelled to my friend Emily, a poet who had accompanied me on this trip and who, despite being nearly six feet tall and having sailed the seas in 10)Newfoundland and 11)conquered sweaty 12)Buddhist meditations, is even more 13)panicked at the sight of a mouse than I am.

She 14)fetched me my tools while I stood guard, 15)looming over the 16)rodent. Being just a child mouse, he didn’t know whether he should go up or down to escape this giantess who, in his little mouse mind, would most likely 17)swoop down and eat him if he didn’t seek cover. He 18)scrambled up, but couldn’t 19)summit the stair; he then sat and washed his worried little face, awaiting his fate.

Emily handed me the broom and I got to work, trying to brush the mouse into the pan. In my mind, it was a perfect plan: brush the mouse into a tall 20)spaghetti pan, cover it with a lid, and take him outside (where the mouse would no doubt turn around and come back inside for more yummy toast 21)crumbs.)

Sweeping up a mouse isn’t nearly as easy as you think it will be, though. The mouse zipped back and forth on the stair to avoid the broom, with me going, “Oh no, don’t you run up my pant leg!” in both English and, for good measure, and who knows why, in Spanish. Finally the mouse decided to take his chances and tried climbing up the wall beside the staircase.

Now, mice are good climbers, but this wall had no wallpaper, so down he went, 22)plummeting to the floor. If it were one of us, it would be like falling from the Empire State Building. But the mouse just 23)scurried down the hall as if he’d meant to do that, with Emily doing a little Mexican hat dance in the hallway to keep her feet out of his path. The mouse then found his bolthole beside the front door and made for the safety of the wall, if only to drown out the 24)shrieking of his tormentors.

All that first night, I had to keep the light on, imagining the mouse scurrying up the bed frame and 25)burrowing into my pillow. All the next day, I kept 26)slippers on, for fear of stepping on this mouse or one of his many, many litter mates who are no doubt just waiting for the cover of darkness before they 27)raid our cupboards.

I told myself this was ridiculous. Irrational. I should be ashamed of myself, I thought, especially since my dad raised 28)gerbils for a living, and I routinely lifted them out of their cages to change the shavings and even fed those little buggers treats from my fingers. Yet, after I accidentally dropped one of the chocolate covered 29)almonds I was eating at my desk and it rolled into a place beneath the heavy bureau that I can’t possibly reach, I panicked all over again, imagining a whole army of mice running out to carry that huge treasure home, and oh yeah, me along with it, like some giant 30)Gulliver.

I’m not the only woman in the world afraid of mice; in fact, I don’t know a single woman who isn’t. “I would have died if that had happened to me,” my friend Andrea agreed. Then she told me a story of her own: something about finding a mouse in the trunk of her car, and her driving to a neighbor’s house at sixty miles per hour with the music blaring, hoping to scare the mouse out of its wits and keep it in the trunk. They set a trap in the trunk of the car but never caught it; to this day, Andrea checks the seats every time she gets into her car.

I finally went down to the hardware store and had a long discussion about pest control with the clerk. I couldn’t bring myself to buy traps, because I knew I’d never be able to empty them. The “have a heart” traps wouldn’t work, either, since they’re basically just fun rides for mice who can easily figure out how to hike back home. In the end I bought poison. Or rather,“mouse treats,” which I suppose are the same kind of euphemism we use when buying “roach motels.”

“I nail mine into place,” the woman explained. “That way, the mice can’t carry the bait off with them and you’ll know how much you have left.”

I haven’t put the treats out yet. I keep remembering the look on that mouse’s face, and his courageous, foolhardy attempts to scale a staircase that was his personal Mt. Everest. He was, by far, braver than I’ll ever be.

我不是个畏首畏脚的人。我曾徒步登过安第斯山和喜马拉雅山，试过高空滑索穿越墨西哥的一个丛林，摩托车开得飞快。我生过三个孩子，分别制服过两个蓄意抢夺我钱包的歹徒。为了避开一个人，我曾从一辆开着的车上跳下来。

然而，为什么我竟然会害怕老鼠呢？

最近，我来到我们位于爱德华王子岛的避暑别墅，准备改装一下房子。不出所料，前梯上就有一只小灰鼠特地现身“迎接”我。四目相投，小家伙跟我一样诧异万分。我尽力保持冷静和理智。但是由于丈夫不在，我只得自己和这个入侵者周旋了。

“给我拿个锅、盖子，拿把扫帚过来！”我冲着我的朋友艾米莉嘶吼着。艾米莉是个诗人，这一趟她与我结伴而来，她不仅有近六尺（约1.8米）的身高，还曾航遍纽芬兰的大海，酷日之下打坐冥想她也没问题。而就是这样一个艾米莉，她看到一只老鼠的时候比我还要惊慌。

当我正在防守，开始迫近那只啮齿小动物的时候，艾米莉取来了我的工具。作为一只幼鼠，它不知道应该向上跑还是向下走才能摆脱这个女巨人，因为它的小脑袋在想，如果找不到遮蔽物的话，女巨人就会猛地一扑把它吃掉。它手忙脚乱想爬上楼梯，但怎么也爬不到顶。于是它只好坐下来，抹了下自己那一把愁容，干脆听天由命了。

艾米莉递给我扫帚，我开始动手试着把老鼠扫进锅里。在我看来，这是个完美的计划了。先将老鼠扫进一个煮意粉的深锅里，然后用锅盖盖住，再把它扔出去。（但这老鼠无疑还是会转身回到屋里享受更多美味的烤面包屑。）

然而，清扫一只老鼠一点都不像你想象中的那么容易。那老鼠在楼梯上来来回回乱窜，避开扫帚。我则随之叫喊着：“哦，不！你别爬上我的裤腿！”用英语喊，这很是正常，我竟然还用上西班牙语来喊了，真不知道自己是怎么回事了。最终那老鼠决定赌一把，竟然往楼梯旁边的墙爬过去了。

老鼠都是优秀的攀爬者，只是现在这堵墙没有墙纸，所以一下子它就砰地直坠地板。如果它是人，那跌坠就像从帝国大厦上掉下来一样。那老鼠只管在走廊疾跑起来，好像计划好路线那样，而艾米莉则在走廊迈着墨西哥帽子舞的舞步以确保自己没有挡住老鼠的路。老鼠此时发现了前门旁边的避难所，为求自保往墙那边奔去，要是这能淹没两施虐者的尖叫声就好了。

第一夜，我不得不整晚开着灯，想象着那只老鼠疾跑跃上我的床架并钻进我的枕头里探查。第二天整整一天，我都不敢光脚在屋里走，得穿上拖鞋，生怕踩着那只老鼠和它众多的兄弟姐妹，它们无疑在等待着夜幕降临，袭击我的橱柜。

我告诉自己这太滑稽，太不理智了， 该为自己感到羞愧，尤其是因为我父亲以养育沙鼠为生，我曾定时把它们从笼子里提出来为它们换刨花，甚至用我的手指去喂这些小家伙。但是，有一次我在办公桌前吃杏仁巧克力，不小心掉了一颗，巧克力还滚到了这笨重的桌子底下某个角落，我怎么也够不着。我又开始惊慌了，想象着一整个军团的老鼠都会出动来搬这笔巨额的财富回家，哦对，连我也一起掳走，就像巨人格利佛。

这世上怕老鼠的女人不止我一个，事实上，我没见过不怕老鼠的女人。“如果那件事发生在我身上，我早就给吓死了，”我的朋友安德里亚附和道。然后她告诉了我她自己的经历：大致是她发现车子行李箱里有一只老鼠，然后她以六十英里的时速开车到邻居家，一路开着刺耳的音乐，希望能吓得老鼠丢了魂儿，让它一直呆在行李箱里。他们在车子的行李箱里放了捕鼠器，但老是抓不到那只老鼠。时至今日，安德里亚每次上车时都还要检查座位。

我最后去了趟五金店，和里面的店员就防虫抗害这议题长谈了一番。我无法下定决心买捕鼠器，因为我知道自己下不了手从捕鼠器里取出那夹得半死的老鼠。那些所谓的“人道”陷阱也并不那么奏效，因为它们不过只是提供给老鼠的有趣旅程，老鼠轻易就认得回家的路。最终，我买了毒药。或者说“老鼠餐食”，我想这是一种委婉的说法，我们买“蟑螂汽车旅馆”的时候也是用了同样的委婉。

“我把诱饵钉在了一个地方，”那女人解释道，“那样的话，那老鼠就不能带走诱饵，你就知道你还剩下多少诱饵了。”

我还没有拿出我的“老鼠餐食”。我依然记得那只老鼠脸上的表情、它那虽不自量力却勇气十足的“珠穆朗玛峰”登梯之举。迄今为止，它比任何时候的我都还勇敢。