If you know me, you know that I am irrationally afraid of rodents. I have a healthy fear of alligators, sharks, unleashed dogs, and roaches but my fear level when it comes to rats and mice is off the charts. I know it is over the top, to the point of ridiculousness, but I can’t help it. No matter how much I try to tell myself that a little furry creature with four legs and a tail is nothing to be afraid of, I can’t shake the crippling fear a mouse in my house induces. Just knowing a rodent is lurking somewhere in my space is enough to bring me to tears, cause cold sweats, and make me want start packing my bags to move.
I clearly suffer from Musophobia. Adam Hutchinson, a contributor on the website www.ovrcome.io, says a phobia of mice and rats “is an intense, debilitating, and overwhelming fear.” Amen, Mr. Hutchinson. You nailed it exactly.
I have not dealt with this fear my whole life. Thankfully, I did not have nightmares about rodents as a child and I never had any experience with a mouse or rat in my home in my younger days that I can recall. However, I can tell you the exact month and year that the fear set in. I remember the day I had my first traumatic experience with a little mouse and the exact moment that triggered my Musophobia.
Bear with me a moment while I give you the backstory leading up to the onset of my fear. For dramatic purposes I will channel my inner Golden Girl, Sophia Petrillo.
Picture it, Fort Polk, Louisiana, September 2005. Louisiana was reeling from back-to-back Hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita had both rocked the state and left millions of dollars of destruction in their paths. Leesville, the town where we lived, was graciously spared from Katrina but was directly in the path of Rita. Fort Polk fared better than other places, but we were left without power for over a week. Because of this, I propped our backdoor open, desperate to feel any little bit of breeze that may have been out in the atmosphere. If you’ve ever been to Leesville, Louisiana in the summer, you know it’s extremely hot and humid. You can almost see the heatwaves in the air and I’m confident you could easily fry an egg on the driveway. The edge of our backyard was a wood line with a small stream running through it—the perfect place for rodents to call home. You can easily put two and two together here and figure out what happened. Hurricane hits, power out, door open for days, unbeknownst to me—mouse comes in.
About two weeks after Rita, life was getting back to normal. I came downstairs at approximately 6:45 in the morning to make lunch for our daughter who was a second grader at the time. I flipped on the kitchen light and that’s when I saw it—a mouse darted at lightning speed from under my refrigerator to behind the bookcase in our playroom. My heart leaped into my throat. I didn’t know what to do. Not knowing anything about mice and how they moved at that stage of my life, I gathered the nerve to enter the playroom and open the backdoor. I wrongly assumed the little guy would gladly let itself out. I thought, there is no way it will come toward me. I am more than a hundred times its size. I went about my morning routine nervously watching the backdoor which was within eyesight of the kitchen. I stood barefooted, by the counter, making a ham and cheese sandwich when the mouse decided to make a daredevil run back under the refrigerator. It ran along the baseboard and across my foot.
Cue phobia here.
I began screaming a blood curdling scream that probably could be heard for miles. I couldn’t control myself. It was like I had left my body and was watching myself flail and scream wildly. It was the first moment of true panic I had ever experienced. Musophobia struck.
My husband, who does not share my Musophobia or my propensity for hysterics, came down the stairs clearly annoyed by my fit. He did not appreciate the noise I was making at that hour of the morning. He said firmly, “Stop screaming, you are going to wake up the kids.”
Seconds later, our son who was a toddler at the time descended down the stairs sleepily rubbing his eyes. He said in his adorable two-year old voice with a slight southern accent, “My daddy woke me up, yelling at my mama to stop screaming.” Man, I love that boy. He’s always been a mama’s boy and I’m proud to say he still is as a young adult.
Anyway, back to the story.
I went into the living room and curled up in a ball on the couch and cried in fear. What else could I possibly do? From the fetal position, I dispatched my husband to find some place open that early in the morning that sold mouse traps and instructed him to buy every single one they had. He thought I was crazy when I said I wanted enough to completely surround the refrigerator and every entrance point to the kitchen. This did not seem like an excessive request to me. I was a nervous wreck for the next three days until we caught that sucker, barely able to function, and way too afraid to go barefoot or set foot in the kitchen.
Funny side story, at that time we lived in a townhouse and shared a kitchen wall with our neighbor, a very nice single dad. A few days after the whole mouse over foot incident, he rang my doorbell. From the moment I opened my front door, I could tell something was bothering him. He beat around the bush for a few minutes making small talk, then finally said, “Amy, the real reason I came over today is because I have to ask you something. I'm a little embarrassed to ask you—but I have to know the answer. I have been debating with myself if I should even come over for the last several days. I can’t make sense of something I saw. Please forgive me for prying into your personal business, but I need to know the truth.”
I stared at him with great confusion. I couldn’t even imagine what he was about to ask me.
He continued, “The other morning, I heard you screaming so loudly I thought someone was killing you. I had never heard anything like that coming from your house before. I rushed out my back door and looked in your window to see if you needed help–but all I saw was you in the kitchen. You were screaming like a madwoman.” He paused briefly, then said, “You were by yourself. Are you okay?”
I could see the look of concern on his face, followed by relief when I responded, “I WASN’T ALONE, there was a mouse in the kitchen!”
Poor guy, he thought I had gone completely off my rocker!
Since then, I have had more than a few run-ins with rodents. Sadly, this was only the beginning for me.
A mouse literally ran out of a field (also in Louisiana) and into my direct path while I was speed walking. This seriously happened to me—and before you ask, yes, I fell down trying to avoid it.
Another one ate through a candy bar that was supposed to go in one of our children’s stockings on Christmas Eve at Fort Leavenworth. Merry Christmas.
I dealt with two more in our house by the cornfield in Clarksville, Tennessee. I was awake one night and saw one scurrying around in our fireplace. Of course, my husband was deployed, and I had to deal with it on my own. I read that mice didn’t like the smell of mint, so my only defense was to fill about twenty cups with splashes of Scope mouthwash and line the two entrances to the kitchen. I know what you’re thinking, this is a terrible idea. Hey, it was one o’clock in the morning and I was working with limited resources on hand, don’t judge. When I finally caught the mouse, my neighbor, an angel from Heaven, came over and removed the creature.
We had three in our home when we lived on post on Fort Liberty. Mousegate 2015 hit the neighborhood, and everyone was infiltrated. We fared better than most. One morning, I woke up and found a live mouse in a glue trap in our kitchen. My husband was in the field (the mice seem to know). I was way too scared to pick it up (yes, there is a pattern). I went outside into my driveway and prayed for a jogger to randomly run by who I could beg to help me get rid of the mouse. Anyone who was brave enough would do. Everyone is vetted on post and Army folks take care of one another, so this is not as crazy as it sounds. Luckily one of my neighbors came to the rescue. My husband repaid the favor when he returned home by checking a different neighbor’s mouse traps each morning for her while her husband was deployed. Again, it’s not as crazy as it sounds in Army living to encourage my husband to go into another woman’s home at 6:30 each morning to make sure she doesn’t have to deal with a mouse!
We also had more than a few find their way into our city home in Hampton, Virginia. We discovered we had a family of mice living in our house about thirty minutes before our daughter’s Halloween party in 2022. Nothing like knowing you have rodents running wild and thirteen teenage girls on their way over! Insanity!
I will be happy if I never see another mouse again. Lord, I have been tested enough. I am still afraid. Please, either cure me of my Musophobia or keep the rodents out!
What are you afraid of? Let me know in the comments below!
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