The Corpse in the Garage

Our garage it detached. As detached as the retina of that whiny rich dude who got hit in the eye by an olive choked up by Jennifer Love Hewitt at the bar in Heartbreakers. That's one of my favorite movies. If you've never seen it, and like a 2001 ribald comedy and/or Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta, and Gene Hackman, you should check it out.

Anyhoo... the weather here has gotten steamy again. I have trouble opening the people-door of the garage. It's just a green metal door with a window in the top half. You should be able to turn the doorknob and pull it open. But no. The wood frame swells up with the humidity. Hick insists on closing that door completely. As if the cars are going to escape. I simply push the door to until it sticks. Then the next day I can pull it open with a slight tug.

Hick keeps the dry dogfood in the garage. The bag is sealed in a big plastic trash can with a lid. I suppose he sometimes drops a nugget or two when dipping the food out to put in the feeder every morning.

Anyhoo... I tried to get in the garage on Friday afternoon. Hick had closed the door. It wouldn't open. I had to set down my purse on the side porch, and grab the handle with both hands. I was afraid that doorknob would come off and send me sprawling backwards onto the sidewalk. It took four tries before I got that door open. I might have dislocated a shoulder momentarily in the process. The dogs were watching with tilted heads.

I picked up my purse and stepped inside. Whoopsie! I almost stepped on something lying just across the threshold. 

A DEAD MOUSE!

He was on his side. Perhaps in a position that mice like to sleep. Yet he wasn't moving. Not a pointy-nosed nasty rat. A fluffy field mouse with big ears. Dead as a doornail. I have no idea what happened to him. He might have been stuck inside the garage, and started to bake from the inside out. It's over 90 degrees in there.

Disposing of dead mice is not part of my skill set. It's not something a VALedictorian needs cluttering up her gray matter. That is Hick's territory. The disposing, I mean. Not the cluttering. I'm sure he would gladly do it for his Harem. So he darn well better do it for me.

The mouse was still there when I got back home. No miraculous resurrection. I stepped over him, and sent Hick a text:

"Dead mouse inside the garage door."

Hick came into the kitchen a half hour later.

"Did you get my text?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Do you know what it said?"

"No. I didn't read it. Here. I'll read it now. Huh. I guess I'll go get it."

When he came back, I didn't ask what he did with the dead mouse. Probably took it by the tail, and flung it as far as he could into the yard, where the dogs would find it later. With a bigger carcass, like a possum, Hick takes it to the end of the driveway, and tosses it into the big sinkhole. Or once he just threw one over the barbed wire fence into the thicket of brush of our neighbor.

"WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING!"

"Huh. I'm going to the bathroom anyway."

And with that, Hick picked up his partially-full bottle of Diet Mountain Dew by the lid, and walked through the kitchen. I did not check the bathroom sink to see if it was wet. I am regretting that I later picked up the TV remote without wiping it off.