When I first had an apartment of my own I woke one morning to find evidence of an intruder. It had chewed through a plastic-wrapped cookie I’d left on the kitchen counter, and in its haste, my uninvited guest had left a trail of crumbs and a single raisin behind.
Although still a fan of fairy tales, I had to admit chances were slim that a Goldilocks character was sleeping soundly on my living room futon. A quick glance in that direction confirmed what I already suspected: Real life never played out like the tales that had captivated me during childhood. I silently cursed Robert Southey, The Brothers Grimm and that entire lot.
I then glared at my cat who happened to be sitting on top of the refrigerator. “Aren’t you genetically programmed to chase mice?” I asked. “Would you get down from there immediately? I need you to search this entire apartment.”
Gretzky took a break from cleaning her front paw. She gazed at me unconcerned and proceeded to yawn widely. She began licking her paw again. We both froze, however, when we heard a scraping sound coming from the cabinet under the sink.
I reached for the phone with a pounding heart and shaky hands. I dialed the number I knew by heart and counted each ring until I head the voice on the other end. “Dad?!” I gasped in both panic and relief. “There’s a mouse in my apartment, and I don’t know what to do.”
Dad calmed me down and convinced me I needed to search for the rodent’s point of entry — most likely under that damned kitchen sink. The scraping noise had stopped. But I still triple-tapped one cabinet door hoping to scare away any visitor inside. I eased it open as I stood, flashlight in hand, in what could be described as a fight-or-flight position.
As I shined the beam of the flashlight around the inside of the cabinet, my dad asked me what I saw. “I don’t really see anything,” I began. “Oh, wait!” I said. “I see a hole.”
“How big is the hole?” Dad asked.
“About the size of quarter, maybe a bit larger,” I told him.
“Elisa,” he replied with what could have been a chuckle. “You don’t have a mouse. You have a rat.”
“Holy crap,” I yelped, dropping both the flashlight and the phone. “I’ll call you back,” I yelled as I ran out the front door of the apartment.
I sat on my doorstep for a couple of minutes debating the possibility of moving out of the apartment I’d been in one week. “It wouldn’t be that difficult,” I said aloud. “I still have most of the boxes.” After begrudgingly admitting I was being ridiculous, I drove over to a friend’s place so I could call my dad back.
“You need to plug up that hole, but you want to make sure the critter out,” Dad said. “You don’t want it to die inside the walls. You’ll smell him for weeks.”
“I’m panicking again,” I said melodramatically into the phone.
I could hear dad grin. “Just call apartment maintenance,” he told me. “I’ll bet they’ll help.”
He was right. The maintenance team jumped into action the next morning while the rat was either out for a stroll or terrorizing one of my neighbors. They plugged the hole under the sink and filled every crack and crevice they could find.
I called Dad from my friend’s house with a full report. “Gretzky and I are staying here a couple of days, just to be sure,” I told him.
He laughed. “Sounds like a good plan,” he said.
“Dad?” I said. “Thank you so much for helping me.”
“You know you can call me any time,” he replied. “I think you’ve had this number memorized since you were five years old.”
I dialed that number hundreds of times over the years. I called with good news and bad. I called to talk about the weather, find out if the fish were biting, learn what casinos to visit in Vegas.
It’s the number I still have an urge to dial. Not with any news or to ask for any help. I’d just like to hear Dad’s voice one more time.
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