#Hot #Tub Wars #2nd round #Santa #Fe: Bring Out Your #Dead

Hot Tub Wars, Round Two:

Bring Out Your Dead

 

   

We used our second hot tub for a few weeks.  Then Rick drained it and shut it down for the winter.  When we returned early the next summer, I called Rick to set it up once again.

When he arrived and removed the side panel so he could have access to the guts of the hot tub, he immediately told us the bad news.  The mice had not only eaten the master control panel, all that was left of it was a dangling, frayed, white wire hanging down from the inside of the spa. 

Me, incredulous, “The actually ate the entire control panel?”

Rick, matter of fact, “They didn’t touch the plastic panel that indicated ‘hi’ or ‘low’ circulation, just all the electronics underneath it.”

Me, more incredulous, “They ate the electronics?”        

When I looked inside at the area behind the small access door, I saw mouse nests and droppings, I noticed that seeds and cactus had been brought inside their enclosure.  The cactus seeds that they moved in to our spa indicated to me that they were doing some interior decorating and would probably soon move in hammocks, perhaps some mousy art objects, all in preparation for a nice long stay.       

We actually found droppings and nests in and on the plastic bags of mothballs that we put in the hot tub to keep them out.

We should have known that the mice would win in the battle of the hot tub when, as we were leaving in the fall, we heard music coming from the hot tub area.  The mice had organized a small marching band and it was playing Souza marches to celebrate our leaving.            

There were so many mice and they were so happy with the homes we provided them in the winter, that they sent us Christmas cards thanking us for the hospitality.  I swear they invited relatives from Arizona and Colorado to join them in their nice apartments and condos inside my hot tub.                       

Once we returned to Santa Fe, before Rick arrived to inspect the hot tub, I would go out every day to check the traps that I had set, baiting them with wonderful tasting Skippy’s chunky peanut butter.  As I walked to the spa, which was inserted in the middle of a deck directly in front of our bedroom windows, I would intone the Medieval chant, “Bring out your dead, bring out your dead.”  Every day I would find one, two, or three bodies of mice.