Death of a winning streak, rebirth of the war

Out of the blue, someone acquainted with my longstanding offensive against the guerrilla units of rodents that frequently overrun my white trash estate said to me: "I haven't read any columns about mice lately — you haven't had any problems with them this spring?"

What?! Shhh! Shut your pie hole, fool. I wanted to say.

What kind of question is that? I mean, really, does this person, this harbinger of ill luck and doom, not understand how the universe works? You don't go drawing attention to some things, like really good things that have the potential to morph into really bad things, especially if the bad thing is the norm and the good thing is a joyous surprise.

For example, you don't walk up to a normally sucky sports team and ask a bunch of questions about their current freakishly good winning streak. You might as well pick up their luck like it's an overripe pumpkin and drop kick it into a festering cesspool of waste water. I'm just saying. It queers the mojo, man.

And in the world of me, you don't talk about mouse infestations — especially if, through some divine intervention or cosmic oversight, the normal and expected infestation has thus far not occurred. I know these things.

It's like administering the kiss of viral sleeping sickness meningitis encephalitis death on the lush lips of happiness. Kills it dead, leaving only a dark void that fills with unhappiness and misery and sometimes, mouse-times, even a killing rampage of anger.

I'm totally not kidding about this.

The dude asked me the question and that very day the mice moved into my horse tack shed. Seriously.

Unfortunately, I didn't see the signs because the first wave of destruction was carried out by a stealth raiding party that sneaked between a doubled saddle blanket and the pad over it and pillaged an 8-inch hole out of the middle layer.

I'm assuming they used my nice, new saddle blanket remnants to make a secure and homey base of operations for their reign of destruction.

I found the evidence only after I finished riding — with the defective padding under my saddle. That night the entire force of enemy mouse-troopers attacked and ate my saddle. They. Ate. My.

Saddle.

I know, you're saying that they couldn't eat my whole saddle over night and, yeah, sure, you're right. However, they did eat about two pounds of leather from some of the most crucial straps that, y'know, keep the saddle, and thus me, firmly and safely attached to the horse.

Without those straps all I have is a ragtag, saddle-like ornament suitable for display purposes only.

Besides, it's not your saddle and most favoritest birthday present ever so shut up about it because you don't know my pain and loss.

And, yes, this would be the pain and loss that drove me to rain terror down on this destructive force of rodents. I rigged a mine field of traps that wiped out 15 saddle-eating mice in 72 hours. Certainly not a record here on the white trash estate, but an impressive body count in an 8-foot-square kill zone for this timespan, nonetheless.

I'm not niave. The battle is not over. It will never be over because the enemy is resilient and always gathering its forces, breeding more rodent raiders.

For now, though, I hold the high ground. Just don't say anything more about it. You could start something bloody that I don't want to have to suffer through this soon.

(Don't even talk to me about the weather at http://www.viewnorth40. wordpress.com.)