Minnesota Prairie Roots

PEOPLE WERE STARTING to talk. So it was time, high time, we did something about the problem.

It wasn’t like we didn’t want to solve the problem, but we couldn’t, not until this past Saturday when the Rice County Landfill was open on a weekend we were free.

We needed to clear the debris—wood siding, old windows, an old door and more—from the side of our driveway. It had been there for weeks, underneath layers of snow. Because we live in a fish bowl, aka a busy street, people know exactly what we are doing and they feel free to comment.

Just a portion of the demolition debris piled under the snow along our driveway.

“When are you going to get rid of that junk along your driveway?” they would remark.

We would explain that we couldn’t until the second Saturday of the month, when the landfill was open for several hours. My husband couldn’t take time off work during the week to do this job.

So this past Saturday was the day, the day we would finally tidy up our property.

Friday evening my husband and son bundled up and loaded half of the demolition debris from our home improvement project into the back of a company pick-up truck. I would have helped, except for one minor situation. Only days earlier, while shoveling snow from the driveway, I heard the tell-tale scritch-scratch of feet, mice feet, in the debris pile.

That was my conclusion, based only on the memory of mice scritch-scratching in the walls of my childhood home. At that very moment I knew I could not, would not, disturb their temporary shelter. Deeply engrained in my memory is my dad’s story of a mouse skittering up his pant leg.

I heard scratching from within this debris pile. My family told me I likely just heard a candy bar wrapper blowing in the wind. I told them I likely knew what I was hearing and it wasn't a candy bar wrapper blowing in the wind.

So I stayed clear, tucked safely inside the house, as the guys hoisted old windows and wood into the back of the pick-up Friday evening. They claimed they did not see a mouse, not a single one, but I was uncertain whether to believe them. Sometimes, they have learned, it is better not to tell me the truth about topics like…mice.

Saturday morning, while the teenage son slept, his dad and I rose early to haul the first truck full of debris to the landfill.

When we arrived back home and I realized I would now have to dip into that snow-covered demo stash and possibly stir up a mouse, I stepped back. Literally. My brave, brave spouse forged ahead. When no mice, not even one, appeared, I pitched in, lifting and tossing.

So to those of you who’ve wondered when we were going to clean up that junk along the end of the driveway, look, it’s gone. Gone. All gone.

And so too are the mice. I wonder where they’ve gone. Could they possibly have…? Nah. Better to not even think that, let alone write it.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling