This is a vole.

Cute, right?

They look like the little field mice in Bill Murray's Scrooged. Cute little ears, small and almost delicate looking, with soft fur (or so it seems...I'd do just about anything for the research cause, but touching--dare I say petting--a little field vole is a bridge too far).

There are 8 species of voles in Colorado, and according to the Colorado extension service, their little burrows--they call them runways--look like the picture below:

I'm telling you about voles because I recently moved to the mountains. Cute little place with lots of trees and wildlife, and a lot less crowded and closer to the hiking I love. Did I mention the wildlife? We have two mama deer and their babies that traipse through our yard. Sometimes the babies are on their own, and well, that's quite disconcerting to hear these fawns bawling for mama, but so far, it's only happened once during a thunderstorm, and what baby hasn't cried for its mama in a storm?

Nala, the neurotic little digger-dog, sits at the window, watching for the deer who commute through our yard every evening like clockwork. She thinks she's died and gone to heaven. Or maybe hell, because she's banned from running the property while the fawns are still about, so she's confined to the dog run.

Starting early last week, Nala, in retaliation, began to dig in the dog run. She hasn't done any mad digging in years. Was she trying to get out? Pretty impressive little hole that I sent my son to go fill while I hauled her upstairs to give her a shower. Mud dripped from her snout and covered her ears, but she wouldn't go willingly, so I donned my swimsuit and climbed into the shower with her. Took awhile for the water to run clear, and she nearly made a mad-wet dash through the house, but while she's faster, I have opposable thumbs. Closed the door to the shower and made her suffer through the indignity of a wash-and-rinse with baby shampoo.

I've been watching her like a new puppy every time she goes out to the dog run, because I can't have her digging up the yard, and I figure at some point, she'll get the hint and quit digging like she's in Alcatraz. By this point I've identified more runways leading away from our dog run and have visited the online extension service website, and I kinda-sorta have a plan to eradicate the things, because that's a little too close to the house for my liking.

As an aside, when we first moved in, we thought we had a mouse. I do a lot of things as a single mom that I'd rather not do, but mouse patrol is pushing my boundaries. First, we tried "safe" non-poisonous baits, which if you focus on the word non-poisonous sounds like a kindler, gentler method, but everyone else realizes that this means that stuff works as well as a human placebo. Made me feel better but didn't do a damn thing to the mouse. But I don't want any of our pets to eat poison--or to take a bite out of a mouse that's eaten poison--still toxic--so I use the pet safe stuff. And it works about as well as shredded money.

I finally set up a good old-fashioned mousetrap and we catch our first offender. I opened the kitchen drawer about three inches to peek inside, and all I saw were tiny feet facing straight up at the ceiling [yes, I have since cleaned, sanitized, and bleached every counter, cupboard, drawer, and utensil]. I closed the drawer and practically begged my son to do it. I know it's not fair. I'm a strong and independent woman, so damnit I should be able to handle a mouse trap, but I just couldn't do it. So my boy--a high school graduate this year, so not so young--does the deed. All he said was "I've done grosser things at work [fast food]."

Oh, thank God, because I wasn't really sure who I would call next to take care of a damn mouse, because I simply could not do it.

So as I looked at that sweet picture of the vole, I realize that the mouse I thought we trapped may well have been a vole. I didn't get a close look, because I was too freaked out, but... that's starting to sound right. Added to that, my son has a room in the basement--real nice setup for a teen with lots of space and privacy--and he's been hearing something scratching from inside the wall at night. First of all, if that had happened in my room, we would have moved out, immediately, but thankfully he's more pragmatic and said, "well, I figure it will die soon."

Apparently our mouse problem is really a vole problem, and if I can't handle a mouse, what the hell am I going to do about a vole?

​While I cogitate on this particular problem, my daughter and I watched our evening dose of Gilmore Girls. It was the one where there's a play of Romeo & Juliet at the school, and Dean almost finds out that Rory kissed Tristan. Yes, Dean and Rory were broken up, but still, the tension was high when Nala started talking to me. She's part Lab and part Husky and she likes to talk--she's impressively vocal--and to shut her up, I let her outside, sans chaperone.

Meanwhile, in the show, Rory almost gets busted a couple times, and I'm doing my stress walk away from the TV when I realize that Nala never barked to come back in.

"How long?" my daughter asked.

"I don't know. 35-40 minutes."

Nala comes in without me having to call her. She's panting and wagging her tail like she did the first day we let her run free on the property. She's covered in dirt, her normally yellow snout is the color of a dung beetle, and she has mud and gunk all over her face. It's eleven o'clock at night. My son is at his dad's house, and while I'm still that strong independent woman, I'm not headed out into the dog run in the dark with God-knows-what other critters out there. I'm also not crawling into a swimsuit this time of night to take the reluctant dog to the shower.

I grab a towel, rub her down, wet wash her face--and wasn't that fun--all the while the neurotic dog is nudging me because he doesn't think it's fair that Nala gets all the attention. I finally get her clean enough for the night and head upstairs to check Twitter before bed. I'm scrolling away when I feel a pinch on my inner arm. I brush it away even as I realize that it wasn't an itch but a sting. I check my arm--red and sore--and then turn on my phone flashlight to get a better look around my seat. Where I find a nasty little creepy crawly with more legs than I want to count. I crush him with the flip flop I keep handy for this kind of thing. The move was instant and instinctive, and then my arm really starts to sting. The burn moving along the nerves down toward my elbow.

Fan-freaking-tastic. I go, knock on my daughter's door. We examine the offending bite in the light and see two very defined puncture marks.

​If you've never searched spider bites after midnight and looked at the images, you're really missing out, but we figure out our little bugger wasn't a poisonous variety (still stings like the devil), so I'm willing to call it a night, but I've got that feeling, you know the one, that creepy-crawly-I-feel-bugs-crawling-on-me buzz that runs through your body faster than spider bite? Yeah, I had to shower all those heebie-jeebie's down the drain, put on clean and recently shaken and examined PJs out of the drawer, and realize that in the morning, I've got to go out to the dog run and see what kind of damage a happy little digging dog could do in 30 minutes.

​Did I mention the wildlife?

On the days leading into Christmas, my washer started making a weird noise. And like any self-respecting, overworked single mom with not enough time in the day, I decided to leave it until after the holidays. This, BTW, was the wrong choice.

My teenage son's fast food uniforms were soaking in the water that wouldn't drain on that final load, so I pulled one out, hand rinsed, wrung it out, and dried it so he could get to work. The second uniform I tossed in with the towels and we proceeded to make merry over the holiday.

After the holiday, the bin with the damp uniform started to emit the kind of stench that makes you power clean your refrigerator, so I drove to the nearest laundromat. Here's a little known fact. Laundromats aren't as common as one would think. We don't have one in our small suburban town, so I had to drive 30 minutes into Colorado Springs, but in the end, the laundromat was shiny, inexpensive, and quick. The clothes were clean, so problem solved, except...

The stench I thought was coming off the dirty uniform... remained.

I incorrectly assumed that having a male roommate would mean someone around the house to do this kind of thing, but in reality, he could go longer with dirty clothes than I could. I blinked. My son was at work, so it was up to me.

The water I had left to sit in the washer tub now had a slimy coating forming on the surface that looked like a mixture of grease, raw chicken, and sludge. We've been dealing with a series of unfortunate events, outside of and larger than the washer, so it didn't reach the top of my priority list until this morning. I drank my morning coffee while watching YouTube videos, and once I was sure I knew what I was doing, I changed into my least favorite athletic wear and set to work.

The first video I watched was this great 1 minute video that showed the control panel of my washer doing what it's been doing to me. Solid, it's a common problem, but... what do I do about it?

The next video had more info. The narrator, a thoroughly nice appliance repairman said merely to "drain the tub." Great, thanks for that, but if it *won't* drain--which is why it's broken--how do I do that? Is there a plug like at the bottom of my ice chest to drain? Nah, that would be too easy.

The next video was a DIY dad. Finally, someone my speed. He knows there are people like me, intelligent but mechanically inept, who need a play by play. His suggestion was to use a shop vac to suck up the water, as he proceeded to demonstrate. It was a beautiful thing; the only problem was that I don't own a wet-dry vac. Most days, I'm happy if my regular vacuum continues to suction the dog hair out of my carpet, and going out to buy a shop vac post-holiday is nowhere near my budget (see series of unfortunate events).

As an aside in the video, DIY dad suggested scooping the standing water out of the washer tub with a cup.

I've changed disgusting baby diapers and poo-filled undies during potty-training. I've cleaned up all kinds of gross kid-vomit, dog mess when someone fed the Neurotic Dog watermelon, replaced the seal attaching my toilet bowl to floor, and even drained the water from my hot water heater when it exploded. I'm relatively handy with tools, having renovated an old Victorian, and I've done my own handy work as a single mom for years.

None of those things prepared me for the smell as I leaned down and scooped cup after cup of water from the washer tub into my tiny bathroom garbage can. I make a living off words, but there are no words for the absolute disgusting stench as I lean into the tub to scoop more water. Putrefaction, today's word of the day, comes as close as anything. Scoop, scoop, scoop. Carry the water to dump down the toilet. Gag. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

On the video, DIY dad pours the contents of his wet-dry shop vac down a drain, saying "that's disgusting." What an epic understatement.

I finally clear enough water to remove the agitator and take it downstairs to rinse in the mud sink. Underneath the agitator is a series of strings, lint, something that looks and smells like poo, and hair. It won't just rinse off, so I leave it to soak. My daughter is in the living room, enjoying her coffee, and says "you're doing good, Mom."

At this point, it feels like she's trolling me as she holds her t-shirt over her nose. Upstairs, I scoop as low as I can, but there's a thin layer of water on the bottom that the cup can't reach, so I soak it up with last summer's beach towels. Maybe it was two summers ago. They cost a buck apiece, and they are now in the outside garbage can where our neighbors will think we've buried a decomposing body.

I'm afraid to tilt the washer on the floor as both the appliance repairman and the DIY dad suggest, because there's still a layer of water below the surface of the wash tub that I do not want on my floor. I don't have any disposable towels left at this point, so I tilt the washer back, hear the brackish water slosh in the subfloor of the washing tub, but once it settles, I can see underneath, which looks exactly like the video, but I don't have the upper body strength to twist the drain pump counter clockwise. Thankfully my son arrives home, and I tell him I need his help.

He looks up from the entry to where I'm standing at the top of the stairs and says, "Smells bad." No kidding. He suggests I open the window in the laundry room. "Gee, why didn't I think of that." Catching my sarcasm, he suggests a fan. And yes, he was right. I position multiple fans as my son climbs the stairs and says, "you know I have gloves, right?"

No, why would I know he has sterile gloves from work? He pulls on the blue plastic. I look at my hands, thinking they will never be clean. He twists the part as if it's the top of a soda bottle, and it comes off with grody strings attached. Still wearing the gloves, he takes it downstairs to clean out in the mud sink with the agitator.

The washer is 15-20 years old. I got it after my daughter was born, and somewhere around my son's birth, so it's lasted longer than expected and these hidden parts have never been cleaned. It had decades of human and dog hair wound around the drain pump. My son cleans it out, not even disgusted, and tells me I've obviously never worked fast food (thank God for that!).

Still, the stench is now all over the house. The dogs whine to go outside and stay out. My daughter has her t-shirt over her nose. My son wraps a scarf around his mouth and nose. I'm afraid my sense of smell has been burned by the putrid decay wafting off the laundry tub.

It's midwinter, cold, but every available window is open. My son adds a hanging car deodorizer in the laundry, lights a candle, sprays his body spray into the fan, and when those don't work, suggests lighting the body spray on fire (boys!).

The drain pump is clean and drying, night has fallen, the house is frigid. I used to think handymen and plumbers charged too much, but today was my Gone with the Wind, "as God as my witness" moment. I will *never* scoop putrified water again. I will pay the repairman what is a healthy wage for the type of work.

Some day. Today, I need to go disinfect my nose.