My friends laughed. I never brought it up again.

We were at lunch. I mentioned the mouse in my kitchen, half-joking, half-hoping someone would say "that's awful."

Instead, my friend Jenny rolled her eyes.

"One mouse? I have tons of them. That's nothing out here."

Everyone laughed. The subject changed. I sat there feeling ridiculous for even bringing it up.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: when everyone around you treats a problem as normal, you start believing your own reaction is the problem not the mice.

I went home that day and didn't mention it again. Not to Jenny. Not to my husband. Not to anyone.

But I also couldn't stop thinking about mice running across my counter at midnight.

So instead of asking anyone else to agree with me, I quietly found something that let me decide for myself how serious this was without needing a single person's permission.

Keep reading, because the reason my old fix wasn't working actually had nothing to do with how "big a deal" it was.

"That's Just How It Is Out Here"

My name is Megan. My husband and I live outside a small town, the kind of place where deer wander through backyards and everyone has a story about raccoons in the trash.

Mice, I learned fast, are just considered part of the deal.

The first time I saw one, I mentioned it to my neighbor. She laughed and said her house "practically has a mouse HOA."

So I did what everyone else seemed to do. I bought a cheap peppermint spray and called it handled.

It worked, for a little while. Then the droppings came back behind the pantry.

I told myself it was fine. Everyone out here deals with this. Maybe I really was overreacting.

But "fine" meant checking the pantry with a flashlight every single night before I let my kids grab a snack.