A true story.

A10

Craig Pinhey

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

I originally submitted this to CBC, hoping that Stewart McLean would perform it on The Vinyl Cafe. So, when you read it, imagine it with Stewart's charismatic lilt.

I left Nova Scotia for Ontario in a little brown 1976 VW Bug, leaving behind my family and friends for a new job and life. I settled in Hamilton, finding a small apartment on the upper floor of a little old home on the edge of The Mountain (a "mountain" which, to all other eyes than those of Hamiltonians, is merely a hill, or even a bump).

My wife-to-be soon joined me, going to tiny Brock U in nearby St. Catherine's, but often staying with me in my Hamilton apartment. We slept in a single bed, which came with me from my parents' place, the only home I knew for my first 23 years. It was one of a set of bunk beds, plucked from its perch, a perch that was always the prime sleeping location when my two older brothers shared it, and when I did with my older brother after that.

The little bed was so worn that it had an impression of a single young man permanently indented in the ancient mattress. This caused the two of us to sink to the middle, making it easy to keep warm, and also preventing late night falls to the hardwood floor. But it was too crowded.

We needed furniture, so we invested (a splurge at the time) in a $399 hide-a-bed, with a half-thickness mattress "" the kind of "bed" that has a bar across that presses directly into your back, making it virtually impossible to sleep. We added a foam mattress, and soon adopted this as our new bed "" out in the living room, only giving it up when we had visitors "" like the Dutch family of four that shared our 1-bedroom on their way across Canada.

That Christmas we put up a tree, even though we were flying home for the big day, and strung it with popcorn, as was my wife's family's tradition.

Now I should mention that this home had a rodent problem. From almost the time we moved in, we'd been in a battle to keep the population down. We'd caught several in under-counter traps, one time returning home from an August trip to the now unforgettable smell of rotting carcasses. I imagined that was what war used to smell like. . .and we were in our own war, and not really winning.

We set our heads down that night, drifting to sleep as the lights twinkled on our tree. Sometime in the middle of the night we awoke to a strange sound "" like that noise your boots make on snow when it's below -20. It's a plasticky squeak, like Styrofoam rubbing together. We listened quietly in the near dark as it periodically reoccurred. I reached and flicked on the overhead light "" the sound stopped. So we went back to sleep, only to be reawakened time and again by the squeaking. One time when the light flicked on we saw movement: a little shaking in the tree. We flicked it on and off, watching that area, and sure enough, the tree had eyes. Not the tree, actually, but there were eyes. Beady little eyes, on the head of a mouse that was gorging itself on tree popcorn. What a find that was! Who knew that popcorn grew on trees?

It made it hard to sleep, and the next morning we set traps. We had no luck leading up to Christmas. The tree was gradually losing its edible garland. . .When we left for Nova Scotia my friend Chris promised to watch our place (we had been burgled before) and I told him about our friend. He winked and said, "I'll take care of him!"

When we returned in early January there was nothing left of the popcorn thief but a trail of blood and peanut butter on a piece of newspaper, left as proof of the kill by Chris the trapper.

Eventually I left Southern Ontario, the Golden Horseshoe, to return to my beloved Maritimes. I drove another bug "" this time a sparkling new red '98 version "" all the way direct from Steeltown to our new home in Rothesay N.B., near another wannabe post-industrial town, Saint John, or Stinktown, as some of its denizens lovingly refer to it. I've often wondered if my furry little enemies came along for the ride. . .but there's never been a sign of them in the annual tree. Then again, we never used popcorn again after that fateful night. . .