>The Uninvited Guest Departs
>When I left off yesterday evening, I had just set out two traps for the mouse, baited with peanut butter. I spent a very uneasy night dreaming of little mouse paws running across my face while I slept. Do mice climb dust ruffles? Probably.
This morning, I raced downstairs and the traps were… empty. Gah. But it wasn’t long before Hubs came down with some news to report.
“I touched the mouse.”
“Yeah, right,” I said.
“I just touched it,” he insisted.
“Where is it?”
“In the tub. I was about to start running the water and I didn’t have my glasses on and I thought it was one of Baby’s Merwees, so I reached in to get it out. And then it, like, jumped.”
16, Baby and I raced upstairs. There, huddled in the corner of the tub was the cutest disease-ridden vermin you’ve ever seen. He was dark gray and tiny. And he was…
In our bathroom!! Upstairs!! How did he get there? And where else had he been? And… EWWWWW!
I mean, cute mice are fine in a cage or outside, but read up on the hantavirus like I did last night and I guarantee that you would stomp a mouse barefoot if you had to in order to keep it away from your kids.
“I can’t kill it,” Hubs said as we looked down at the shivering mouse. “It’s too cute.”
“But if you put him outside, he’ll probably just come back in again,” I said.
“I’ll drive him down the road,” Hubs said. And that’s what he did. After scooping the mouse into a shoebox, Hubs liberated him in some woods about two miles from our house, where he’ll no doubt make a nice meal for some hawk or snake on the prowl.
I’m just glad he made a reappearance when Hubs was still home, and that he trapped himself in our bathtub. Because obviously, the little guy was a social creature (Hubs had seen him 4 different times in the 12 hours he spent in our home) and would’ve scared the bejeebus out of me at some point or other today by making his presence known in many unexpected and highly creepy ways.
I’m putting the traps up in our attic now, because I’ve seen some signs of suspicious activity up there from time to time and I now have a fear that we have a whole extended family of mice secretly living over our heads.
The End. Hopefully.
>Oh, what a great ending. Hubs rids the house of vermin (and shows a manly streak of softy doing it) you, 16, and Baby see the mouse before it leaves, therefore NOT building up into anyone’s mind to become The Giant Mouse That Will Bite Off Your Nose, and mousie got a new home.A nice story!I hope there aren’t any sequels.May 2007 NOT be the Year of the Mouse.
>We just moved into our house in August. I’ve “caught” seven mice since then. I don’t mean to be negative, but every time I thought we’d seen the last mouse, we’d find the cat staring strangely at the kitchen cabinets.
>I think the mice are invading Bellevue. We just found some in our house too. And those woods, down the street — they better not be the ones that border my backyard!My mousecapade here:http://sittingstill.typepad.com/sitting_still/2006/12/all_through_the.html
>i thought mice always travled in pairs…..
>Here’s hoping he doesn’t have a twin. 😉 Glad it’s over. Hope it’s over. 😉
>Word! Did you put it on YouTube???:)http://gigglesugar.com/94933Glad the little heathen is gone!
>”Hubs had seen him 4 different times in the 12 hours…”OR – Hubs had seen 4 different mice in the last 12 hours. Sorry, but it IS a possibility!
>Yeah, I thought about that, but odds are it’s the same mouse. Small, dark gray and the first mouse we’ve seen in the house in the four years we’ve lived here. What are the chances that we’d have a total infestation in a matter of a few hours? I’m trying to stay positive here, dammit!
>Just remember where there’s one mouse there’s another and possibly several (so keep the traps out)… We had a similar story, but ours was with a large brown bat (he was nestled in the Christmas garland on our balconey), and we caught him with salad tongs – no lie…
>Seriously, I don’t know which is worse. Finding the trap WITH a mouse in it, or finding the trap WITHHOUT the mouse. We did that relocation of the vermin thing once, about 25 years ago.
>This is a true story:Our cat is an outdoor cat. We always make sure before letting her in that she’s not dragging in a present for us. I’ve taken many a baby bunny out of her grip and returned it to the forest. She would get angry at me for doing that and kept trying to disguise how she was bringing her gifts home.One day, she was waiting at the back door to be let in. I checked her mouth and no, nothing was dangling.She came in and then opened her mouth. Yep…you guessed it. A mouse. Not a dead mouse either. She brought home a live mouse and managed to get the whole thing inside her mouth so we couldn’t see it.It took us 4 days to catch and kill that mouse. Now we make the cat open her mouth before she’s allowed inside.As a side note, you DO know that if there’s one … well, I won’t say it out loud. I’m sure you’ve already thought of it.
>hooray! glad you caught The Mouse and how nice of you all to “set him free” — hopefully he doesn’t have GPS 🙂
>If it makes you feel any better, you’re TOTALLY in the wrong part of the country to have to worry about Sin Nombre.
>Ewww…I’ve had 2 mice enter my home…and my dogs just loooove those little vermin. Thankfully I don’t worry because it will either leave the way it came in or leave on it’s way out through very sharp teeth.Thank god for my pups that love to chase mice! (I’ve had cats, they just stared…)I hope that mouse doesn’t find his way back to your home…
>Love this story. We have mice visitors once in awhile. Funny places they have been: in our stove, in a pair of boots, and on top of a seemingly-impossible-to-climb microwave and appliance stand, where they (or it) chewed open a bag of sesame seeds in a spice drawer, ate some, pooped profusely, and disappeared.
>So far, I have not had one in the house and I have a large cat, so that would be taken of nicely.However, I have one very determined, very fertile, mouse that loves my gas grill on the deck.Yup, that little bugger makes a nest under the burners, has a litter and continues to come back, even after I light the grill to scare it off and burn off the little mouse germs.I will spare you the details of the first lighting this spring and the two babies that were still in there. (None were cooked but there was some high drama as they tried to escape and I did not know whether to help or hinder…..)
>i love it. one night in Cambodia we had just turned off the light in some dank little guesthouse, and heard a weird noise, turned back on the light, and saw 7 or so mice on every surface, backpacks, the bed, chairs, etc…all blinking at us. needless to say, we slept elsewhere that night.i so love that your man drove the mouse to a new home. very sweet.
>Mice in a cage are cute. Mice running free in my house are not cute. My husband loves to release things like spiders. I prefer them dead. I hope that the mouse stays away from your house.
>I totally relate to your fear of mice – regardless of how small and cute they may seem while crouched helplessly in a bathtub. While living alone in my first house, I quickly found out that I had a mouse and took EVERY precaution to get rid of it. This included keeping every light in the house on ALL the time, constantly playing a CD with owl sounds (which was supposed to scare mice away), and turning off the heat in my house (I reasoned it was coming inside because it was warmer-HA! Not for long!).I finally used poison – and it/they never returned. I know you can’t use this with a baby or pets around – but, I stand with you in your quest to rid your home of those little plague-starters!
>Here in Baltimore the mouse population is so bad we can’t get the mean traps. Sold out everywhere!!I had a dream last night that we went to the movies with our girls. I think we had a good time.
>I’m glad you caught him. But. You know what they say. There is never just one mouse. Just sayin’. You might not want to get rid of those traps just yet.
>I hope that’s the end of the mouse.we had a mouse nest in my garden a few years ago…I found it when I was watering and poured the water directly into the nest…Mom and babies went running in all directions! I then found a snake to put in the garden! It wasn’t big enough to eat the mice, but it’s smell kept them away and it ate the grashoppers too! Bonus!
>Have you figured out where he got in? I had a mouse once and realized he’d been coming in through a hole under my kitchen sink which I promptly filled up with steel wool. I never saw that thing again…
>I couldn’t kill one either. Toooo cute. I love little furry things. But I’d definitely banish it to the park or something. And don’t read up on diseases if you’re squeamish! Bad idea! Put down that reference book!
>So many of us (too many of us!)have had mouse adventures! Mine is posted at http://compostermom.blogspot.com/2006/12/just-when-you-think-its-afe-to-go-back.html.
>My best friend owes her new home to an infestation of mice. For years I was telling her – go buy a home. Stop renting. But she loved her little Victorian cottage. It suited her. Besides – it was haunted. How many people get to live in a haunted gingerbread house? But the woman who owned it wouldn’t sell – and I thought owning a home was a good investment – but Amy wouldn’t budge. I had all but given up hope until the winter of the mice. Now Amy absolutely abhors mice. She’s dead afraid of them. One particularly cold evening, wandering around by the front window was Mr. Mouse. My phone rang. She was screaming. I stayed on the line with her until the boyfriend showed up to do battle. No mouse. OK – out come the traps. They didn’t work. Then she saw TWO mice actually on the front window sill and that as they say was that. Within three months she had bought that house I was pleading with her to get (my birthday present to her was the down payment). Needless to say she’s thrilled. No ghost in this one; but no mice either. She also has that dog she’s always wanted – and he keeps the house completely free of any unwanted visitors!