The exhausted dad: If you give a mouse too many cookies…

Forget what the books say. You should never let a mouse get too comfortable.

All of my kids love the “If you give a mouse…” series of books by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond, though they’ll eventually need to learn that those slippery slope arguments won’t do them any favors in debate class.

Look, those books are great, but I’m suspicious of that little mouse. He weasels so much free stuff out of people, and nothing ever seems to be enough for him. I suppose he did clean the house in one story, but it looked like he made more of a mess in the process.

Anyway, the “If you give a mouse…” series is just a small fraction of the children’s stories about mice, from the three blind ones to Pinky and the Brain. “They’re so cute and innocent!” declares every kid story ever. And don’t get me started about “Ratatouille,” easily the most underrated Pixar film in their entire run and one of the best overall movies of the 2000s. It’s about rats instead of mice, but you get the point I’m making – We love fictional rodents.

Once real mice get into the house, attitudes change. The poison and the traps come out, and the kids are wondering why their parents are trying to murder Mickey Mouse.

As if we didn’t have enough going on around the house lately, a small colony of mice recently decided to move into our garage. Who knows how long they’ve been there because I only realized we had a problem until one of the cocky little buggers decided to investigate the living room.

It was 1 a.m. and the house was silent. I had just closed my textbook and was finally relaxed enough to go to bed. And then I glanced over at my son’s toys piled on the floor alongside our living room bay windows. I saw Spider-Man. I saw the entire PJ Mask crew. And then I saw something moving… something furry with a long tail. It seemed pretty small when I first locked eyes on it. Now my memory tells me it might have been the size of a possum or hedgehog.

I didn’t sleep well that night.

With my schedule full the next day, my wife decided to sacrifice one of her vacation days to do a full-on poop investigation around the house. Luckily, we didn’t notice much (yet) in the house, but that’s when we discovered ALL THE POOP IN THE WORLD being stashed in our garage.

Look, I feel bad for the little fellas. Honestly. But you’ve got to go. Closing Time. One last call for alcohol, so finish your whisky and beer and get the (expletive deleted) out of my house.

The kids have mixed emotions. On one hand, they really like that “An American Tail” movie. On the other hand, they don’t want to think about real mice scurrying along their beds in the middle of the night.

Honestly, if the kids don’t agree with the impending fate of our little visitors, I have a hard time feeling bad about it. Because the mice are in our house because of them. This is their fault.

You want to know what else I found next to Spider-Man and the PJ Masks crew on the ground next to the bay windows? A half-eaten granola bar and a ripped-open, sour-smelling yogurt tube.

Also on the floor that fateful evening: Cookie crumbs, pretzels, Cheerios, pizza crust, bread crumbs and popcorn. I looked under our couch and found much more food, including remnants of many products we haven’t had in the house for months. Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t find mouse droppings piled to the size of that Triceratops dung that Dr. Sattler scoops around in “Jurassic Park.”

The next day we implemented a new family rule: “Food at the Table. No Exceptions.”

At this point, it appears the infestation has been (mostly) limited to the garage. I still don’t sleep well at night, and my wife thought it’d be funny to find ALL the mouse-related children’s books and spread them across the living room. If I could write the next “If you give a mouse” book, I’d have it end on page 2. “If you give a mouse a cookie… you’re an idiot. Mouse needs to live outside.”

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 5-11. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.