Dear World: I Am Terrified of This Basement

Or, "an ode to a foot deep of dead mouse skeletons in your walls" and other fun-filled images you will never be able to forget

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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IMPORTANT / GROTESQUE / TERRORIZING LIFE NEWSFLASH:

Did you know that mice can’t control their bowels?????????

I shouldn’t know this information.

I should NOT know this information, except I met a man named Wesley the other day, and the moment Wesley walked down my driveway, it’s the first thing he says.

“Yup, anywhere they walk—like on your countertops—they’re just pee, pee, peeing away!”

He tells me this with some sort of twisted glee. It’s like he’s filling me in on nuclear secrets. (That, or he’s just touched a boob for the very first time.)

“But, you can’t see it without a blacklight,” he continues, making me really regret ever placing any spatula on top of any countertop ever in my life.

“Mice deposit hundreds and thousands of micro droplets of urine per day.”

He gauges my face, looking for the shock he knows will come. And, he’s right: I make the kind of face that someone who’s never lived in the countryside would make. But, dear Wesley has underestimated me: he does not know that I’ve just spent the last eleven years living in the Costa Rican rainforest. Field mice can’t hold a candle to jungle roaches! Right?

Wesley sniffs runny snot back up into his nose. His square, wire-framed glasses shift around on his face. He proceeds to investigate the property, from top to bottom, to analyze any potential threats—you know, like giant fucking holes in the side of the house where mice would want to come in.

I follow him into the basement.

I have followed no fewer than ten strangers into my basement, as of late, trying to figure out everything from hot water heaters to propane gas lines to old furnace systems to electric boxes to main water shut off valves—there is always something going on in my basement. This is no regular basement. This is an 1873 basement in the Pennsylvania countryside. It’s a stacked stone foundation, built on top of a massive splay of solid rock. If you could picture a miniature stone quarry with stilts, that is what my basement looks like. The inspector told me that, thanks to these rocks, the house has hardly shifted in all these years. All I can think of is how many spiders there must be down here.

My literal, actual basement

“Oh, well, this is illegal,” Wesley comments knowingly, looking at a bunch of wires in the ceiling. “There should only be two wires feeding into this, but there are—he counts—1, 2, 3, 4, 5.” He shakes his head, disappointed. “These electricians just rush through the job.”

Wesley is a pest control guy, but he tells me his father runs a respected construction company. He has, as it seems, soaked up a lot of knowledge.

“These openings are here for air flow,” he tells me of two tiny windows at ground level. “But they’re going to make your living room floor ice-cold in the winter.”

I do not mind Wesley’s off-topic opinions; I’ll take all the knowledge I can get. Though I can’t help but notice that this is a welcome trait of the people around here: they are extremely generous with their time.

For example, the propane guys came and didn’t just look at my propane tank, but also came into my basement (!) and helped me figure out how to be a homeowner. And then, they did the same thing over in the cottage.

The trash guy—Christopher, a big burly mountain man—laughed at me this past Tuesday when I came flailing out of the house in my slippers, dragging my trash bin behind me. I had heard the garbage truck outside and remembered—oh, shit!—it was trash day, and I hadn’t put it out. “I was just taking a photo of your driveway,” he goes. “But I had a feeling you were gonna come running out here any minute!” Christopher the Burly Mountain Man Trash Guy then proceeds to have a 10-minute conversation with me, right there in the middle of the road, asking me what plans I had for the cottage, and the barn, and the retaining wall, and the house. He didn’t care that he was on a pick-up schedule. He didn’t care that he had other houses to get to. Christopher put humanity ahead of hurrying. And, all this humanity is really starting to rub off on me.

Case in point?

The other day as I was driving through town, and I saw an elderly man carrying a stack of chairs down the sidewalk. He was obviously struggling. At first I drove by. Then, I said to myself, “Ashley, stop being such a fucking coward, and turn around, and go help that man.” So I did a U-ey, drove back down the street, put my window down, and asked if he wanted a lift. That’s when I noticed he was not, in fact, an elderly man, but a creepy looking man with bad knees who probably locks children in his basement, BUT, WELL, I WAS INTO IT NOW, AND HOW CAN YOU RE-NEG MID GOOD DEED??? So the creepy looking man with bad knees who probably locks children in his basement put the stack of chairs he probably ties the children to into the bed of my truck, and then, after several failed attempts, managed to hoist himself—and his dog—into the Jeep. We drove two blocks and I dropped him off at the house with the basement where he probably keeps the children, and nothing happened, and everything was fine, and I was not stun gunned and held up for ransom, and hey, I did a good deed! Next time I will be sure to pick up a creepy-looking woman with bad knees and see what kind of adventure unfolds.

Yesterday, I kept things exciting and took a chainsaw to a bunch of brush that was hanging over the edge of my driveway. It kept scratching the roof of the Jeep. So I said, self, let’s do something about that: you own ALL THE RYOBI CORDLESS POWER TOOLS, go chainsaw that shit down! This is how I spend my afternoons now, doing things I am not qualified to do. I cannot tell you how good it feels to do things I am not qualified to do. The day before that, I took the actual front door off its actual hinges, plopped it on a couple of actual sawhorses in the garage, sanded the fucker down, and put a fresh coat of red paint all over it. Done! I probably did it wrong, but it’s done. Like, there’s no top coat or anything, but whatever, I painted the door. AND IT’S DONE.

And done is better than not done.

But also, what a confidence builder?

The day before that, I took an old, shitty bookshelf the sellers had left here, and I picked it up in the air and then I went SLAM! right on the corner of the bottom. Do you know what happens when you slam a shitty bookshelf on its corner? The whole thing falls right the fuck apart. It is magic. There I was, thinking I’d need to unscrew every shelf for hours upon hours, when a friend of mine here advised me of this TOTALLY PREPOSTEROUS TRUTH: just slam it on its corner. Most things fall apart. Who knew?!?!

Anyway, so here I am now with this chainsaw—really leveling up here—and, with the help of a friend, went out and chainsawed down all the brush, and then piled all the branches and leaves and pokey things in the bed of my Jeep truck, and then drove it down to my barn, and then dumped it in the bottom as clean fill. I made five or six trips, when suddenly a neighbor appeared. Amy, her name was. Amy was from New York. Amy and her husband, Bob, wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood. She told me she used to be a chef. That she loved food. That she’d been in a bad car accident. It happened twenty years ago. We proceeded to give each other the basics of our lives for the next fifteen minutes, me standing there with those awful yellow cleaning gloves (you know the ones), and her yelling at her dog. I really need to get real work gloves, but the awful yellow cleaning gloves were the only ones I had on hand. Is that a pun? Maybe I should stop drinking this coffee. But anyway, Amy still liked me despite the fact that I was wearing those awful yellow cleaning gloves. And the weird thing is, I enjoyed our conversation. I welcome these kinds of interactions now. In the past, I would have hid. 😂

I wonder, sometimes, if hating people is a symptom of hating your own life. Can that be a thing? Because right now, I am loving where my life is headed. Right now, life feels gentle. And, I fear I’m becoming more gentle because of it.

“You should really buy some large gap spray foam,” Wesley tells me as he continues his property inspection. I have contracted Wesley as a proactive measure, because I keep hearing these rumors that when it gets cold, the mice don’t die or hibernate or just fucking go away—THEY COME INTO YOUR HOUSE SEEKING WARMTH. And, look, I’m way less scared of mice than I am of cockroaches, but also still, did you know that they have “constantly growing, chisel-shaped incisor teeth???” And, what if they bring in ticks, mites, fleas, human flesh-eating vampire bugs??? Plus, their feces spread some serious disease. Would you like some serious disease on your sandwich?

My biggest question is this: what do I do if I see one scurry across the floor? Like, what is the procedure here??????? The gerbils and hamsters I kept as a kid were in an enclosed tank. Do I chase it? Ignore it? Someone told me I should run after it and kill it, but (a) Gross and; (b) With what? A broomstick? And, what does that solve really? One single mouse mom can give birth to some thirty mouse babies per year. Bring a hoard of those moms to a PTA meeting, and we’re talking over a hundred mice children, e-e-e-e-asy.

(Actually, I was just talking to my assistant, Elizabeth, about this and she says that when they bought their house in the countryside, they gutted the basement, and found a FOOT DEEP of mouse skeletons in the walls. I will never be able to get this image out of my head, never again, for as long as I live. Cheers!)

Meanwhile, Wesley goes about the property, placing these big black boxes in strategic locations. Apparently, we’re going to poison them all.

Did I just say I was becoming more gentle?????????

It’s not like I want to poison the tiny little creatures that live in my backyard. But, I also don’t want to feel like my house is crawling with them at night. I haven’t seen any yet, but I don’t want to. And, if anywhere was going to have an infestation of them, this old farmhouse seems like the place: the woods back right up to my garage. (Though, not for long: the excavator guy came last week to go over the property and make a plan to push back the earth so we can extend the driveway and make a terraced English garden (!) and build a new garage and make new water drainage systems and all sorts of excavate-y things. You know how long he was here? Two whole hours. On a Friday afternoon. Didn’t even bat an eyelash, even when I forced his ass into the basement. Who’s the creep now????)

In addition to the big black poison boxes, Wesley places four mouse traps around the actual floor of the garage, which completely grosses me out.

“What am I supposed to do with those???” I ask, reticently.

“When the trap snaps, you take the dead mouse, and you throw it away,” he says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world.

“Like, with my hands?????????”

“Or you can use one of those grabber sticks that old people have.”

I suddenly remember seeing one of those hanging on the garage wall. I had wondered what the sellers had used it for. I am a little bit nauseous.

“I’ll be back next month,” Wesley says. “But if you have any problems in the meantime, feel free to call.”

He will be sorry he suggested that.

So, Wesley leaves and I am high on how responsible I am. Look how adult and put together, calling pest control people before I even need it! How planner-y of me is that!!! I go to bed that night and think, “Damn, you are one hell of a baller.” To top things off, I also baked a chicken breast without drying it out. Wow.

And then in the morning I wake up.

Get my coffee.

Put on my slippers.

And remember it’s chainsaw day.

So, I walk out to the garage. Rub the sleep from my eyes. And then it happens.

One of the mouse traps is turned over.

Surely the wind didn’t do this? Did the spring malfunction?

I inch closer.

There is something IN there.

The horror sets in.

Oh holy fuck shit balls fuck shit balls fuck shit balls fuck shit balls.

I grab my phone and turn on the flashlight.

Isn’t there supposed to be a long tail?! Oh god, I cannot bear to see a long tail.

But, there is a tail. It’s short. Maybe it’s a baby. I’ve murdered a baby. But more importantly—there is an actual dead mouse. Right here. In front of my face. Which means there were….mice. In the garage.

Fuck shit balls.

Its fur is dark and glossy—a charcoal color. I see its feet. They look like the end of a Christmas garland.

I regret coming out here in slippers.

I regret, like, everything???????

I inch toward the other mouse traps, wanting to close my eyes but knowing I MUST FACE THE TRUTH; they, too, have been turned over. Out of the four he placed, three were set off.

And all three had dead mice in them.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS.

I put them there on the off-chance that one would casually make its way toward my house one day in some far-off imaginary and distant future.

I didn’t expect an overnight massacre.

Which means…I now have to pick up not one, not two, but three dead mice.

This is, of course, the moment you’re thrilled to be reading this newsletter. I really wish I could tell you I put on my bravest face and marched over to the grabber stick and took care of business like a real fucking heroine.

Instead, I texted my friend D.

“THERE ARE MICE AND THEY’RE DEAD! I AM HYPERVENTILATING!”

“Relax,” she writes. “I’ll come take care of them, give me ten minutes.”

See what I mean? People around here are beyond generous with their time. They’re even willing to leave work to come dispose of deceased rodent corpses. (Then again, I do have excellent friends.)

I texted Wesley.

We’re on a texting basis now, of course.

“Wesley, I am SCARRED FOR LIFE.” Three out of the four of those mice traps have dead mice in them already!!!”

Wesley says he’s near my house. That he’ll stop by and take care of it. Because, of course he will. This is life in a small town.

“Oh, these are voles,” he tells me, grabbing the trap—and the rodent—with his bare hands. Its limp body jiggles in the air.

“Uh, a…what?” I reply, trying not to look but really wanting to look, sort of like a car crash.

“A vole,” he says again. “Like a little mole—it’s a relative of the mouse.”

He flings the trap and the vole with its body attached—plop—into my driveway. I recoil. Now there are two spots where I can never step ever again in my life.

He goes around the garage and grabs the other traps. They are all voles. He throws all of their dead bodies into a heaping mound.

He is about to put them into a bag—which he will then put into his truck and drive away with (!!!)—but before he does, I squeak, “Hang on, I gotta take a photo of this.”

And, of course, I race into the house, grab my phone, and then race back out, where I photograph the scene of the crime. It’s not as gruesome as I would have thought—I always imagined lots of blood and guts and intestines dangling round, but they just looked like they were sleeping—and I know I need to document this as evidence to send to my friends. (And, uh, write about on my blog?)

Wesley comes back from his truck with not four, but ten mouse traps, and places them all around the garage. Like I wanna look at these things. But he tells me this is what I need to do, to be preventative, and keep them out of my house. Which is clearly the most important location. But, is this going to be a full-time activity? Am I ever going to be able to go into the garage again? Will I ever be able to go out and grab a screwdriver without having to also pick up dead vermin carcases???

I don’t know how I’m going to live like this.

But I do know that the very first thing I’m doing is going down to the hardware store and buying seventeen cans of large gap spray foam. Which is precisely what I do. Of course, as soon as I walk in, I bump into an old friend from school. We talk for the next twenty minutes. Here, there is never a rush to get away from a conversation. It feels like this is the point of life—and everything else is the interruption.

I come back home.

Put on my awful yellow cleaning gloves.

And march out to the garage, determined to close up some of the big gaps in the bricks and the blocks leading to the great outdoors.

Anddddd, I see it plain as day.

Another trap is turned over.

It hasn’t even been a couple hours!

I swear, if this were a movie, it would be the moment when the hero must overcome their inner demons and attack the problem head-on. So, that’s what I tell myself to do. Be the hero, Ash. You can do it! Bag the body!

So, I walk over to the grabber stick.

Approach the trap.

It’s (another) vole.

Grasp the damn thing.

Choke down vomit.

Place it into a bag.

And throw it into my garbage bin, feeling bad for Christopher The Big Burly Mountain Man Trash Guy.

And, wow, I feel strangely victorious. Not because of the murder(s), of course, but because with each little scary, new thing I do, I am proving to myself that I am the kind of person who can rely on herself.

This is what I bought this house for.

It is a test ground for my own personal development.

Funny that when you force yourself into situations where you must grow, the funny thing is that you actually do.

I am on a mission to experience this world intimately. Not just as a casual observer, but as a front-row participant. I want to know everything from writing books to living abroad to eating tiny little sea terrorists to buying a house in the countryside as a woman by myself.

And so, a new adventure begins.

A new day dawns.

A new sun rises.

A new vole emerges.

And a new person is built, scary thing by scary thing, until all the scary things are familiar things, and all the familiar things feel like home.

Hopefully she can control her bowels.