Mobile, Alabama: Solving for X: An Inelegant Elegant Solution

 

From Luggable Loo to kitchen trash bin

 

It was a mystery. 

Something weird was happening to the plastic grocery bags that I used for my kitchen trash. 

The contents were falling through the bottom of the bags onto the floor. 

At first, I thought it was because there was an unnoticed hole in the bags, because that happens, and I shrugged my shoulders and determined to look carefully at the bags before I hung them from their customary cabinet door knob. 

But then I noticed that it seemed there were actually rips in the bottom of the bag. 

How odd. 

I did wonder about a mouse, but I had neither seen nor heard any other evidence of such. Nevertheless, most nights, I took the bag o' the day out to the trash before I went to bed.

However, the other morning, when I'd failed to take out the trash the night before, there was no doubt. Definitely some critter had a serious envie for the almost-stripped-clean corn cobs from dinner that I'd tossed in the bag. The knife-like incisions that ran perpendicular to the bag bottom were the final circumstantial evidence that an intruder was afoot. Furthermore, the two corncob halves had been rolled across the kitchen floor far afield of the bag. 

I still saw no bio evidence of a rodent, and if I've got roaches large and voracious enough to cut through the plastic bag with such surgical precision, I don't want to know about it. 

So what was this rootless minimalist to do to foil the rodent(s)? 

Well, you've got the answer from the photo. 

My luggable loo! 

It's a PERFECT solution! A easy-lift lid that also snaps shut. 

I feel so pleased.

A mouse past

I can only recall one other apartment where I had a mouse. This was in El Paso. I was in the midst of an online lesson with an ESL student when suddenly I saw a mouse skitter across the floor in front of me. I jumped in surprise, emitting an involuntary squeal. When I told my landlady that I had a mouse, she immediately proclaimed, "We do not have mice!" 

Yeah, well, the mousetrap you brought up to my apartment the next day soon captured the nonexistent creature.