Stacy Randolph

Mouse woes delight

I have some strangers living with me. Well, they don't live with me, they live about 5 feet from my house in my hot tub decking. I generally wouldn't mind, however, they smell, break down my hot tub with their little gnawing teeth and keep having babies. That's just rude behavior.

Mice just don't scare me, I don't scream like a girl when I see them or anything. I have a soft heart and wrestled with the thought of killing them...although I knew I'd have to deal with them one way or another. You'd think that my cat would help me out here, but she doesn't like to deal with things like mice or flies. I would say she's tenderhearted like me, but she devours spiders like crunchy afternoon snacks...and well, she is a cat and they do like to hunt. So, I think she's just elitist and that this a job more suited for outdoor toms.  

So, I got some bait (after 4 agonizing trips to home improvement stores to find the most humane bait) and set out to put it in the bait box, but the box that Terminix left me last year apparently requires PhD to open it. Or a key. That's what I found out after calling them, anyway.

Well, so in making the call to Terminix to figure out how to open the box and they convinced me that they would be better equipped to deal with this problem than me--plus they will inspect all the spaces around the house that mice might have broken into. I have to say that it didn't take much to convince me that red-blooded hands look better on someone else. What can I say? I live in a paradox of eco-thinking and luxury-protecting. I'm not proud of it and quite honestly, this ties my human guilt muscle into knots.

On to the delight part. . .

So, I told Terminix that I would be interested in their service if they could tell me when the soonest that someone could come out--because I wanted to get this done ASAP. The gal I spoke to told me that she needed to check on the technician's calendar and that she would call me back in 5-10 minutes. I received a call about 5 minutes later that the other gal who runs the technician's calendar was out to lunch, but that she'd give me another call in 20 minutes or so. She called me back shortly and we got everything setup for a technician to come out on Monday. Easy schmeezy.

Here's what delighted me about this experience:

1. The gal at Terminix didn't have the answer for me. But, she promised to have an answer for me within a timeframe and her attitude was one of urgency. She understood that my time is important and that made it okay that she didn't know.
2. When the Terminix gal couldn't get the answer in the timeframe she promised, she let me know. This told me that she cared about my expectations.
3. Because I had confidence that she was working on it, it was not painful to wait for an answer. I had confidence because she communicated with me.
4. And ultimately, I have to admit that I have major relief in not having to kill whiskered things myself. That's my own thing and I'm paying a good amount of money to live in the illusion that it's not me who's harming furry creatures. Terminix knows this and so do I--and we're both okay with that.

The Terminix gal knows how to serve people. DELIGHTFUL!