The snows were so deep this past winter that our propane-powered outdoor grill, which is near the house, below the kitchen window, was almost completely engulfed in snow. Except for a little space below the side burner, which sheltered the ground underneath just a little bit, it looked like just a bump in the blanket of waist-deep snow.

These past two weeks, a lot has been melting, and now we've got about 75% ground exposure, with patches here and there with 1-6 inches of old accumulation.

Darleen got a craving for a cheeseburger on the grill. It was pouring rain, but as readers of old Site Journal entries will know, I don't mind grilling in the rain at all. So I went out to fire up the grill for the first time this year. (At the place we used to live in, the grill was *somewhat* protected from the snow, so I grilled all through the winter. This year I couldn't.)

I flipped up the lid on the grill and discovered a small pile of leaves and things. Wait, no, something just skittered around the bottom of the grill. A mouse!

I was startled and pulled away reflexively. "Hey Leen, there's a mouse in the grill!" She came out, and just as she got there, the mouse crawled into the nest of leaves. The nest was more than just leaves. It was leaves and dryer lint, with a bit of unrecognizable dry matter making it up also. I got a stick, so I could scare the mouse out of the nest, so Leen could see it. I poked the nest, and there was some rustling, and the mouse darted out and crawled around the bottom.

"He's cute!" she said. He was. His body was smaller than a walnut, a nice clean smooth gray in color, and he had rounded ears, a twitchy nose, and a long tail. But the nest seemed to rustle just a bit much, it seemed, so I poked it again, and suddenly five or six more were swarming around every which way underneat the grating.

So that was why they were cute: they were young mice, old enough to have fur and maneuver about on their own, but young enough that they were still in the nest and probably under the care of Mom, who was absent at the time. Anyway, the mice burrowed into the areas underneath the coals (it's a gas grill, but there is some charcoal in there for flavor) and in the small duct underneath where grease drippings are funneled through a hole and down into an empty soup can.

I bet those mice had quite a time of it in the grill for the winter. It must have been the perfect shelter from the weather, and we scatter sunflower seeds right near there for ground-feeding birds. There were a lot of empty sunflower seed shells in the bottom of the grill, although with the two years' worth of built up grease scunge.

But as cute as they were, I did not want them in my grill. They were mice, and mice are pests. Ideally they should die, but I wasn't going to kill them by my own hand.

So I wheeled the grill through the pouring rain, away from the house and toward the trees at the back of our yard, removed the grating, scooped out the nest with a stick, then turned on the gas and fired up the grill. Most of the mice were huddled up beneath where the flames are, but they were pretty worried nonetheless. Only one leapt into action straight away -- he somehow got above the heat, so he was furiously trying to scamper up the side of the grill. He slipped a couple times, and Leen and I winced as we feared he might catch fire, but with a little help from a stick, he made it to the rim and ran along it. I flicked him off to the ground, and he dashed over the bed of leaves and into some brush.

The rest were not immediately visible. But moments later, we spotted one inside the lid, which was flipped open. We couldn't get at him from there, because two upper warming racks were in the way, so we closed the lid a bit to make him slide down, then, when he was on the rim, flicked him off as we did the other one. A third mouse escaped underneath and huddled under the propane tank, and a fourth mouse fell in the soup can, so we pulled the soup can out and dumped it on the ground to let him out.

So that was four out, which meant there were two or three left, unless they escaped without our noticing, which is possible. But I peered all around, and I couldn't find any more. So I shut the flames off and wheeled the grill back. I left the lid open, figuring the rain wouldn't hurt anything, to discourage the mice from returning.

Leen didn't get her cheeseburger that night. I didn't figure it was wise to cook food over flaming mouse poop. But it was as good a time as any, I suppose, to clean out all the sludge anyway. Two years of hamburger juice drippings, kielbasa goop, and barbecue sauce sizzling down there (oh, also a toasted bee carcass) means it's spring cleaning time. I made that my project for the next day, assuming the rain had stopped by then.

Whether the mice were old enough to survive on their own, in the rain and cold, in all those leaves and brush, I do not know. Certainly, however, the grill had become unlivable. The next morning there was a dead mouse down there amongst the coals. Dew was all over it. It might have come back to the grill, but more likely it never left, and when I wheeled it back, it didn't know to leave and find more suitable accommodations. That was the only one I found, though, when I cleaned out the grill and hosed it down. At any rate, maybe tonight we'll have cheeseburgers.