For about a week, we've been sharing our closet with a dead mouse. He's been...transitioning. In the small, clothing-packed confines of our closet, the smell peaked after about 7 days—I mean it really, really peaked—then disappeared in just hours. There in the morning, gone that night.

I feel bad about the mouse; Joe suspects he was chased out of his tall grass home by the brush mower we rent every fall. It seems like a long way for a mouse to go just to get away from a big lawn mower, but still. We are plagued by guilt... although I may be overstating Joe's feelings about this.

Last summer we used a ultrasonic pest repeller in the barn. For years, mice built nests in the nooks and crannies of our tractor. They chewed wires, they blocked air filters, they died gruesome, fan-blade related deaths. But this silent, slightly crackpot-seeming device seems to work. So well, in fact, that we're putting one in the attic.

It requires a degree a faith; you plug it in and nothing really seems to happen. A little light comes on and presumably, ultrasonic waves start emanating from it in a rodent-repelling kind of way.

I have no evidence that this is actually happening, other than the fact that our tractor remained mouse-free, which is good enough for me.