POCKET MOUSE

This is a warning to all you gals out there who love their denim, like I do.

The other night I went to grab a pair of jeans from my closet for the first time in a while. The first pair off the pile had a mysterious hole in the back pocket. So did the next pair AND the next pair. Panic started to set in. In fact, six of my favourite pairs of jeans has scruffy looking holes in them. (the heart pocket Jill Stuart jeans are especially painful and illustrative)

WHY?!!

Clearly this was the work of a mouse. The perplexing question was why would would a wee mouse target the same critical location in hundreds of dollars worth of jeans?

The answer, my friends, is dog cookies. I often put a couple dog cookies in my pocket for Maisy throughout the day. Usually I’ll break the cookie in half for economics and wind up with a pocket full of cookie crumbs. Little did I know that this could lead to a little mouse desperately chewing through my back pockets to get to this feeding jackpot.

Luckily, I have years of denim repair experience. When I tripped and fell in my first pair of Seven jeans, ripping an unsightly hole in the knee, I learned about the Denim Doctors (now called Denim Revival) in California. They were known to resuscitate old and damaged jeans with magical skills. I packed up those ripped jeans and FedExed them to the Doctor. They were returned to me a few weeks later, almost as good as new. I studied the repair and came up with my own repair technique which I have been using ever since. Once I do my repairs, I’ll post the ‘after’ photos and we’ll see how bad the damage really is. I’ve never had to repair pockets, so this may require some extra finesse.

There is now also Denim Therapy in Ohio, if you need the help of a professional.

I’ll spare you the details, but the culprit has been dealt with and the bait was dog cookies.

All this lead me to remember the game, Mouse Trap. I used to play it at my grandfather’s house. The game was always filled with so much anticipation about whether the bowling ball would hit the see-saw causing the man to catapult into the tub and actually trap the mouse. I miss fun board games like that.