What Happens When It Snows - Part 2

So there was another mouse. A live one. My husband, having once again achieved that place of almost-sleep, was rudely re-awakened by the shouting of an urgent wife. I had very briefly taken my eyes off of the mouse in order to bellow my need of help to the top of the stairs; turns out that rodents, even very tiny ones, are quick on their four feet, and our small guest had hid himself in a place where we couldn’t find him.

We gingerly poked and prodded our way around the kitchen in an effort to locate the little beast. We scraped the microwave cart out of its spot, and squeaked chairs across the floor. Everywhere we looked was a place where he wasn’t.

Sean and I reconvened and decided that it would be a good night for watching “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and cozied up on the couch with our ears turned toward the kitchen. Every few minutes my husband would creep into the kitchen with the kids’ Fisher Price flashlight set on red light (so as not to disturb the mouse’s night vision or something like that) to see if he couldn’t locate the mouse’s position.

It wasn’t too long before the mouse was found cowering behind the training potty. The question of how to capture the rodent without mortally wounding it became a very serious one now that actually finding it had increased our chances of removing it from the house.

The squeaker fled to the area behind the microwave cart and refrigerator. Armed with a flashlight, I stood sentry on one end while my husband guarded the other end with a small cardboard box in his hands. I realize it was foolish to think that one of us would be quick enough to actually bring the box down on top of the mouse, but we were desperate to have thing out of our house. (We’ve never had mice before, to our knowledge at least, but we have heard that it is very undesirable to share living and cooking space with them. Unless, of course, they have mad cooking skills like Remy in “Ratatouille.”)

House mice are cute. I know they are dirty creatures and all, but their plump little bodies and shiny black eyes make a person go all kinds of squishy inside once one is over the initial fear provoked by a wild rodent running loose around one’s house. So there we were, two grown adults alternately awwing and shrieking as we chased the mouse back and forth in our feeble attempt to corner it.

Then it happened. My husband finally had a chance to drop his empty Green Mountain Coffee box and trap the vermin. He chickened out. For whatever reason he found that he could not do his duty with the carton. So we switched places.

The mouse continued to run back and forth between us without ever coming out from the safety of his path behind the appliances. Occasionally he would wiggle underneath something and then poke his nose out for a look around; once, he found a small piece of cat food and stopped for a nibble; crouched on his haunches, he held the little bit of sustenance between his front paws and turned it round as he munched away at it until it was gone.

Then came my turn to try my hand at capturing the mouse. As it turns out, I did not find it difficult to slam the box down on top of the mouse. Not exactly, anyway. I suppose I should say that I did not hesitate to slam the box down: it just didn’t actually come down on top of the mouse. I believe I mentioned earlier that those mice are fast movers. I am proud to say that although I didn’t trap the entire mouse under the box I still managed to snag his tail.

I looked down at the mouse struggling to free himself and I thought to lift the box ever so slightly, and deftly bring it down on his entire self. That little mouse was like a wind-up toy. Once the box let go of his tail he fairly flew under the stove.

















It has been a week now, and we have yet to ascertain where the mouse is, or was, or where he will be. The cat has not managed to kill him. Our live trap, laced with peanut-buttery-goodness has not caught him. That first night, I would awaken with visions of our rodent-killing cat dropping the dead furry carcass on my face in a display of pride. He’s still pretty proud of himself for annihilating that first mouse.

Mostly I’m just glad that the mouse was slain after the kiddos were safely in bed, and that it’s dead body was found before the cat had a chance to eat it’s face off. I’m also thankful that the little mouse body didn’t lie on the rug until morning when one of the children was sure to find it before dear old mom.



















*I don't mop under my appliances every day.*

What Happens When It Snows - Part 1

The cold winter weather seems to drive warmth-seeking critters into our abode. Last November the bat of doom and destruction visited us. A couple of nights ago a little mouse couple invaded our home.

It had seemed a long day and all save myself were in bed asleep by nine o’clock. Being savagely tired but in need of a snack to fill a hole in my tummy, I went down into the kitchen to find something to eat. I took note as I entered the kitchen that our two cats were sitting and looking at their food dish; this generally means that they are starving due to negligence on our part; I peeked over and saw that their dish was full.

I proceeded to the refrigerator, put a small helping of leftover lasagna on a plate and stuck it in the microwave for one minute, after which I took my plate into the dining room. Maybe two minutes had passed from my entering the kitchen until my leaving it.

As I crossed the threshold into the dining room I noticed one of the cats batting a toy around in front of me. Seamus is a rather playful cat and to see him dashing about after the kids are asleep is pretty ordinary. What caught my attention was that his toy wasn’t making any noise. It didn’t smack when it hit the wall. It didn’t make a rolling sort of sound as it jostled around the floor.

Bending over to determine what the cat had found to play with, my hand began to reach for the object in question. Now, I didn’t have my glasses on and there is a questionably speckled Berber rug in our dining room/living room area. (Brown specked Berber is great for hiding stuff). What stopped my hand mid-reach was the tuft of white glaring back at me from the floor amidst the surrounding drab colors.

I followed the white tuft up and saw a little mousy chin; I followed the tuft down and spotted a small mousy tail. A dead mouse right outside my kitchen door was most certainly the very last thing I expected to see. We’ve never had to deal with mice before!

My poor husband was shouted out of his comfortable sleep, and told in no uncertain terms that he must rid our home of this mouse! He wandered about for a bit in a suddenly-awakened sort of stupor, but eventually the dead mouse was disposed of and the cat was sufficiently back-patted, and my husband went back to bed.

A few minutes after he had reached the land of sleep in his little sleep-sloop, there again came a suspicious clatter from the kitchen. Being on high alert I immediately betook myself to the culinary epicenter of the home. After a very short investigation I determined that there remained yet another rodent to be dealt with.

Things that go BUMP in the night

My baby girl was fussing around ten-thirty last evening. She never fusses at this time of the night. On this rare occasion I can say that I am absolutely thrilled that she kept me up. I can also say without pause that, for what it’s worth, I am glad my husband was home from his men’s group at church earlier than normal.

After I nursed her I was settling her back into her crib when I heard one of the cats pawing at the window blinds in the dark.

“Argh,” I thought as I tucked the blanket under the baby’s legs to keep her warm, “when will those dumb cats learn to leave the blinds alone!”

The cat must have gotten bored quickly because I heard him start to play with the piece of Styrofoam on the floor that my son had pilfered from the box belonging to the new microwave. I turned to leave the room and head back to my own when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a dark shape hovering near the window and heard the unmistakable sound of wings in flight. Turns out the cats were not in the room with me after all; the sounds I had heard were courtesy of another animal.

I groaned. “You have got to be kidding me! Seriously? A BAT?!”

And then I did what any good mother would do: I ducked. No, I did not gather my children together and haul them to safety; nor did I drape myself over their bodies to protect them from this horrible apparition. I ducked. Allow me to defend myself by stating two semi-obvious facts: I did not wish to wake them only to have them become frightened, and I did not believe them to be in any immediate peril because bats don’t tend to be aggressive creatures. Oh, and this one was, to my estimation, clearly not rabid.

I continued to crouch as the bat swooped and glided around the room looking for a stable place to land, all the while making those kissy/squeaky Styrofoam noises that bats make. I began to consider how I should go about the process of bat-removal. There was the distinct possibility that if I alerted my husband to the bat’s presence he would freak. (My husband would freak, not the bat.) I had visions in my head of my husband blindly running around in circles until he dashed into a wall and knocked himself out.

Trying to sound perfectly calm so as to engender calmness in my husband, I called out, “Honey, can you come here? There’s a bat in the kids’ bedroom.” I had to call several times before he dragged himself out of bed to walk down the hall. (I later asked him why it took so long for him to come to my aid. He replied that he believed me to be joking. ‘Cause, yeah, any mother would want to wake her sleeping children up so she could have an excuse to begin the ritual all over again by shouting about some imaginary bat).

He plodded to their doorway, looked over the gate and gazed stupidly at me. “What are you talking about?” he asked, with a look of concern that undeniably indicated that he thought I had gone mad at long last.

The bat took flight again, squelching my husband’s concern for my mental faculties while at the same time making his concern for his own well being much more imminent. He feels the same way about bats as he does about bugs. Cue the freak-out music, please.

It was then I decided that I could not remain in my hunkered position forever, so amid his shouts of “get the kids out of there!” and “save yourselves!” and the standard “what should I do, what should I do?” that I arose with my arms about my face and head and clambered over the safety gate into the hallway. Probably because things with wings always surround a light in the outside darkness, my first inclination was to start turning on lights in order to draw it away from my sleeping babies.

I quickly flipped the hall switch and the office light switch, illuminating half of the upstairs; then I opened the office window and lifted the screen. The bat darted out of their room all right, but it missed the office doorway and went down the stairs instead. It alighted on some blue ribbon from which hangs a framed photograph of our first portrait as a family of three.

Now that the creature seemed less of an immediate threat my husband started to bark orders. My son had woken up what with all of the shouting and shrieking, so I was commanded to stay with the children while my husband, brave soul that he is, dealt with the bat.

I found it impossible to remain upstairs. With the level of noise emanating up through the floor I was afraid that the bat had somehow discovered that it could arm-wrestle my husband to the floor: it sounded to me as though my fearless protector was shouting and thumping the equivalent of “uncle” in some strange and foreign tongue indicating that he needed urgent help. Either that or he was performing an Indian bat-ridding dance. Either way I didn’t want to miss it.

It must have been the latter because when I arrived on the scene my husband was not pinned to the floor. He must have forgotten one of the critical steps in his dance though, as the bat was still present- circling around and around the ceiling fan in the kitchen. Actually, what my husband was doing was taking pictures! And ducking. I don’t think the bat liked the flash very much.

Once again the fearless ridder-of-things-black-and-yucky commanded me to go upstairs and tend to the children. I made a quick detour to turn on the porch light and open the front door. There continued to be much shouting, stomping, and falling over while I waited with the babies for the battle of the wills to be over downstairs. Eventually my husband threw himself to the floor one last time (he claims the animal was attacking him), and the bat became tired of all the shouting and extricated himself from the house by means of the front door I had left open.

Needless to say, a number of books were read and songs sung before everyone was sufficiently tired enough to go back to sleep. The only injury sustained during the whole ordeal was a broken toenail that my husband acquired during one of his spectacular dives to the floor. Hopefully that blue throw rug I stuffed behind the attic door will prevent any other nighttime creatures from penetrating into our living space. Hopefully.