House of Mouse

As a parent, I spend many, many hours weekly immersed in the antics of animated characters. I've been quite upfront in this space about my lack of regard for Mickey, so I won't rehash that opinion here.

I will concede that he ranks higher than he once did, since I got forcibly exposed to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which is at least cheerful and attempts to engage the kids -- and features some of the catchiest music.

It's also worthwhile to note that Mickey's and Minnie's houses -- note carefully, houses; no hint of impropriety in this relationship -- were among the highlights for the kids during our Disney Visit, and they were genuinely pretty thrilled to meet the Great Mouse in, um, person. Mickey made a big deal out of my daughter wearing a Mickey t-shirt... however, both kids were a mite puzzled by one thing: on TV, Mickey is chatty to the point you'd like to stuff a sock in his snout (?) on occasion, but in person he resorted to pantomime and could not be induced to squeak out a single word. Disney should have pamphlets available with advice on how best to handle those types of questions.

Seemingly of a different species altogether is the rodent half of the Tom & Jerry comedy duo. I have to say that I've always harbored a real prejudice against these two as a result of childhood exposure to a lot of Hanna-Barbera dreck such as Magilla Gorilla, Quick Draw McGraw, and Huckleberry Hound (aka the Not Funny Crew), and it's only in the past year I've really studied them closely, albeit involuntarily, every night on Boomerang from 7:30-8:00 pm ET.

I'm compelled to admit that even after repeated (and repeated, and RE-repeated) viewing of Boomerang's Tom & Jerry repertoire, rare is the evening that I don't admit at least once (sotto voce), "OK, that's funny." I do sometimes wonder why Tom sings at times, but seemingly can't speak; Spike the dog, and Nibbles the other little mouse, and that little Yakky-Doodle fellow rarely shut up, but T&J remain resolutely silent.

Of course, hardly anything in the cartoon world makes any less "internal" sense than almost any episode of Heroes (or for that matter, the fact that "According to Jim" is still on), so I suppose it's pointless to quibble.

Animated hijinx aside, I haven't found our last few trips to camp all that amusing. Since our camp is only sporadically occupied, and not exactly hermetically sealed, we've been aware that we're at risk for four-footed visitors. It hasn't been that uncommon to find upon arrival a scattering of very tiny droppings; once we found that a jar of peanut butter had had its top gnawed. Mostly, however, I've been successfully pretending that we're doing a kind of woodlands timeshare where they leave long before we arrive.

A couple of visits back, just after lights-out, we heard dishes being bumped around, so I stepped out into the kitchen to find a frightened mouse scurrying back and forth in confusion. No, wait -- that was me. Anyway, as we both scurried, he dove off the counter behind the stove and disappeared. All I could do, really, was to plug the gap with a big mug and go to bed -- but before we left the next day, I set out 2 traps loaded with (what else?) peanut butter.

The next time we returned, my wife went ahead earlier, and when I arrived with the kids, she said, "Remember the, um, things on the counter? Well, they were, uh, you know... but I took care of them." And having claimed two victims enabled me to return to my deluded state.

That night after lights-out, we did hear the pitter-patter of little feet (and I knew it wasn't my daughter, because she just lies in bed and yells, "DADDY!!"), which we eventually concluded was inside the wall and hence not fixable in any case.

This last time when we went back, I moved some throw-pillows on the bed... and found an acorn. I'm not sure whether the mice are getting bolder, or whether they're inviting the squirrels to party with them, or what. I am a bit concerned, though, that the next time we're going to find red shorts and a pair of white, 4-fingered gloves in the laundry basket, though.