I don’t have much creativity left today, so here’s a story.

Today I gave our minivan a thorough cleaning, which was exhausting. My kids are disgusting. At some point, my wife and I decided we should put the second-row middle seat back in.

This seat has been on a garage shelf for about a year, so decided I’d better give it a good once-over. When I turned it over to vacuum the underside, a mouse came scurrying out of somewhere. This startled my wife into an adorable scream and dance out of the garage.

Once I got my laughter under control, I went back to vacuuming. Since I noticed some discoloration under sear, I unhooked the upholstery from the frame as I went, in order to get all of the mouse’s detritus. Well, when I got to the back of the seat, I found two of his buddies crammed into the seat’s tubing.¹

I was very close to putting the seat in the van, even after the first mouse revealed himself, because the seat seemed perfectly clean. Who knows how long it would have taken to discover mice were living in our van. Based on how much food debris I cleaned up today, they would never have gone long without a meal.

We definitely dodged a bullet, in the end, but are also now in the market for a new middle seat. Win some, lose some.