SHARK!

Every family has its stories. The ones that are told - and retold - year after year after year at holiday meals, birthday parties, weddings... funerals. 

The ones that make us piss ourselves with laughter and make our spouses roll their eyes. 

They're stories that bind us as families decades after they happen. Ones told with such breathless, heaving hilarity that they can make us forget any family rifts or betrayals that color our relationships as adults. 

Like the time, my sister threw a boomerang at my brother and ripped a gash in his head that sent him to the emergency room. On the day that my mother was already in the hospital giving birth to me. My father laughs so hard every time he tells this story that he cries, gasps for breath and has to hold his sides to keep from splitting in half. 

Because the story doesn't end with my brother's admittance to the hospital. It ends with my father's.

It goes something like this: my brother was fighting off the doctor's attempts to put his head back together so my father held his arms. In the melee, the doctor, or was it the nurse?, accidentally squirted something in my father's eyes that temporarily blinded him. 

Four of the five family members hospitalized on my birthday.

It's Damico legend. 

So is the time my sister learned to waterski in the bay off the coast of New Jersey, sometime in the late 70's or early 80's when "Jaws" was a blockbuster. She was waterskiing along successfully when she terrified my parents, stood up in the water, and screamed "SHARK!"

My mother dove from the boat to save her, right into a sandbar. The sandbar that my sister confused for a bloodthirsty ocean predator. 

You can see why this makes us howl with laughter. And Kent mutter "Oh no, not again."

All of this hit me this morning when I walked from the bedroom and Kent intoned in his very serious voice that he needed to call the pest control company. The one we had to the house last year to help us with the "mouse problem." 

My heart sank. I immediately started to scan the floor for dark shadows that hinted of furry vermin. I thought of the incident that will be told - and retold - year after year after year at holiday meals, birthday parties, weddings... funerals. 

The first Damico-Lassman family legend.

The set up: one night last year, when the temperature started to drop, Kent and I sat in the front room and watched television as the children slept. The house was mostly dark. From our chairs two rooms away, we saw a tiny shadow scuttle from the basement door to the oven. A path of three feet, maybe four. 

Oh my God, I thought. A mouse! Maybe not, though. Maybe we were mistaken. 

Then the next night. The same scuttle over the same path. 

We moved Uma's bed between the door and the stove and thought our fierce hound would scare the vermin away. But the next night the mouse just ran around her. Uma barely sniffed. Fierce dog indeed.

Kent borrowed traps from neighbors and placed them here and there. I cringed at the SNAP and made Kent clean the horrendous aftermath. 

I adore mice when we see them at the pet store - so small, so adorable, so Disney. I considered them a benign nuisance when they confined their household forays to late night sprints through the kitchen. But they became domestic terrorists the day they moved out of the kitchen into the family room. 

The story: It was nap time. The house was quiet. The lights off. And there it was. The unmistakable shadow streaking across the floor. I screamed. I thought it ran beneath the stove but I was wrong because later, the same day, after the kids were up, we sat in the front room and saw it. THE SHADOW! IN THE FRONT ROOM! I screamed as it raced from the couch to the chair. "AH! AH! AH! AH!" I screamed so loud that Josephine threw herself on to the couch, buried her face and sobbed. Esme giggled. Desmond just stared. I pulled my feet on to the chair and tried to find calm. Tried to rationalize myself back off the panic precipice. 

I told Desmond to go look beneath the chair. Yes, me, the 37-year-old mother, told him, the 2-year-old son, to find the mouse. Another fine moment in parenting.

The boy who would later grow into a knight or Max, battling the Wild Things, bent over, butt in the air and peered beneath an ordinary striped chair looking to slay his mother's enemy. No mouse. I reasoned with Esme that perhaps it found a hole near the radiator and fled to the basement. It made sense. We sat for a while but I wasn't ready to put my feet on the floor. Not yet. Josephine stopped crying but she didn't get off her protected spot either. Finally, I tiptoed over to the chair and peered under. I thought I saw a shadow but figured it was fear getting the best of me. I tipped the chair back to get a better look and... 

THERE IT WAS! FLEEING THE SCENE! RUNNING FOR SAFETY! RUNNING RIGHT PAST MY FEET! 

"AH! AH! AH! AH! AH! AH!"

I was screaming again. Josephine was crying again. Desmond was jumping up and down. Esme continued to laugh. Nervous, excited laughter.

The mouse blazed across the room and ran right under the closet door. 

I called Kent at work. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "AH! AH! AH! A MOUSE! IN THE HOUSE! AH! AH! AH!"

Kent: "Calm down."

Me: "AH! AH! AH! AH!"

Click.

I accidentally disconnected the phone because I was so frantic. Dial again. 

Me: "THERE'S A MOUSE. IN THE HOUSE!"

Kent: "Get a hold of yourself!"

Me: "DON'T TELL ME TO GET A HOLD OF MYSELF. THERE'S A MOUSE. IN THE HOUSE!"

Click.

I disconnected the phone several more times out of stress and panic. I know it's ridiculous. I think that's part of what makes the story so hysterical. I just couldn't get a hold of myself. No matter how many times I told myself to calm down. I was crazy, consumed by the most insane, most irrational fear. Kent told me to trap the mouse inside the closet by running duct table across the closet door openings. So I did. Then I barricaded all of us in another part of the house. When Kent came home, I shut us in the bathroom and told him to check the closet. 

My parents laughed later when I told them about the duct tape strategy. Mice can squeeze their tiny heads through teeny crevices, they reasoned. Tape wasn't going to stop the bugger. Here's the thing: it did! When Kent checked the tape, he found the mouse (still alive) stuck on the tape. He took it outside and set it free. That's what he told the kids anyway.

We called the pest control people immediately and "the mouse guys," as Desmond called them, found their entry portal within minutes. They stuffed the hole and set up traps and we didn't have another unwanted visitor. But for weeks, I couldn't open the closet door without fear that a brown mouse would pop out. I imagined them in the refrigerator, in the bread drawer, IN MY SHOES! I saw shadows everywhere. 

Esme thought about them too and started a ritual that persists to this day. "Keep the mice and the trolls and all the bad things out," she tells me every night before heading to bed. 

We've told the story numerous times over the past year and sometimes I imagine we'll tell it the first time we meet Josephine's husband. 

Esme might start the story this way: "Remember when Josephine buried her head in the couch and screamed about that mouse?" 

Or Josephine might say at Desmond's college graduation party: "Desmond, remember when Mama made you look under the chair for the mouse?"

Maybe they can even tell it at my funeral.  "Remember when Mama freaked out and trapped a mouse in the closet?" 

Then they'd all laugh and laugh and feel good on an otherwise sad day. I'd like that. 

Comments

[Lea R]

Eeeeek! Even more than the mouse, I hate the path of turds they leave. Mice are cute and wonderful little creatures UNTIL they get in my kitchen and poop near my children's utensils, or on the counter, or on the floor where they walk and play. THEN those mice are fair game. And look at it this way: If you put a live mouse outside, it's just going to come back in.

That said, I think we've secured all the crevices. Haven't had a sign of a mouse in months. Hope it's the same for you starting tomorrow!

[Dana Damico]

Last year, the mouse guys stuffed the entry portal with steel wool. I went outside today and there was a tell-tale mark in the soil where the furry freaks have been either jumping in ... or falling out. I fixed the steel wool and hopefully made it so no unwanted creatures make their way inside tonight. But who knows?... Domestic terrorists! I mean it!