A Mouse Tale

Saturday night was terrible, in the night I heard a scratch scratch, scratching in my closet.

Definitely a mouse, definitely unacceptable. I desperately tried to ignore the noise, but soon the sound changed to a scratch scratch scratching under my bed!!!!!!!!!!!

Ack!!! I hoped I had a imagined it, I hoped it would go away, it seemed like for hours the scratching continued.

Finally I could stand it no longer, I flipped on my light, of course this caused the scratching to stop, and set out on a determined search to find out how that nasty little critter got into my room.

Pulling mostly everything out from my closet, I discovered a small space between the carpet, and the Sheetrock in the back of my closet, and just as I was examining it, a little mouse stuck his head out. ICK ICK ICk.

I stomped downstairs, flipped on the light and loomed over barry, who had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the fire. Barry, a deep sleeper with hearing loss surprisingly opened his eyes and looked up at me with a confused expression. I explained very nicely that I had been up all night listening to the scratch scratching of a nasty mouse, and that I had found his hole and that he(barry) would get up early before church and block it.

Barry surprised me again, and quickly agreed and closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

Now 4am, I tromped back up the stairs, happy to have a plan, I sat on my bed and announced to mister mouse. "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die!
Laying down on my bed, I then peacefully went to sleep.
I was woken up in the early morning by Barry asking me what in the world I was talking about in the middle of the night.

I explained againnicely, and Barry seeing the dark shadows under my blood-shot eyes wisely did not argue and went to work. He blocked off the hole to my satisfaction and then quickly got ready for church, I got Ellie ready and sent them off. Yes, I sent them off to church without me, claiming a sore throat. The sore throat was in fact true, but it was from the cloves I put in the cookies that I had eaten the night before, and was in no way contagious.

The Ox is in the Myer, I told myself, a mouse is in my house, and that is a very serious thing.

I went to work, cleaning out my entire closet, which was full of all of our emergency supplies, 72 hour backpacks, guns and suitcases. I cleaned out under my bed throwing away anything the mouse might have licked, scratched, peed on, etc.
I washed all of my bedding in case the mouse had perchance scampered across a blanket hanging on the floor in the night, and swept and vacuumed the entire house in case the mouse was looking for a last meal.

After thoroughly cleaning the closet I did leave the the mouse behind just one small present, a gift bag, with a mouse trap snugly tucked behind it. I quietly closed the doors, put another log on the fire, dished myself up a big bowl of ice cream and waited.

It wasn't long...... SNAP!

R.I.P little mouse.

Ahh I could suddenly breath again, the air seemed cleaner, the world was a better happier place.

I grabbed a newly washed and dried blanket and curled up in front of the fire and peacefully feel asleep.

I did reset the trap, just in case mister mouse, was a mrs mouse, ....and I'll tell you what happened then, but that story is for another day.




Authors' note: Now don't be reading this and thinking I'm mouse-a-phobic or something. I am not. I would do the same thing if someone let their cat, dog or gerbil scamper through my house. Of course then I would have to use a bigger trap. ;)