Of Mouse & Monaco

Last night while reading about general revelation I sensed movement in my periphery. “Surely not,” said I to myself. But, I glanced, only to see the perfect silhouette of a medium-sized, smokey grey, long-tailed, mickey ear’d mouse against my ivory covered footstool. The irony.

I froze. The mouse darted under the stool, and then I hollered (I refrained from screaming), “BAHHHHB?! Can you come here for a minute? I saw a mouse!” He came quickly and stood in the doorway, safely and at a great distance from the sighting, and asked me if I was sure it was a mouse.

With my knees tucked under my chin, my eyes darting to and fro, my skin crawling, I answered, “Yes I am sure” (my eyes just rolled).

You see, we live in a new, third floor condo. Our first floor neighbors have had some mouse troubles lately, so we weren’t completely surprised…but still. I started thinking the worst, “Where there’s one mouse there’s 20 more.” I envisioned families of mice crawling between the walls in search of a warm, snuggly place to nest. I did take solace in the fact that there’s almost no food in the house.

Anyway, Bob sought our neighbor’s advice and borrowed all their devices – traps that simply trap the rat…I mean mouse, a plug-in thingamagig that makes noise only a mouse can hear, and hates.

After we gingerly overturned the stool, inspected under every piece of furniture, and used our CSI flashlight to inspect the most obscure corners, shook out our shoes, we slathered the traps with peanut butter, positioned them strategically, and went to bed.

At about 1:30am the trap clicked and our victim was caged. Creepy.

This morning brave Bob took it with him on his way to Walmart (where he bought steel wool to fill any holes and poison for future intruders). Our little pest was released into a whole new field. Lucky duck.

Bob returned home and sealed a nice sized hole behind the stove, and we hope that’s the end of it.

So, I got up at 5:00am because I didn’t sleep much after the little bugger was captured. Bob never went back to sleep. Then, I got to school late, forgot my glasses, took a Greek quiz and could barely see. Last evening and today was completely thrown off-kilter — all because of a tiny weeny little mouse.

But, we are getting to know our neighbors!

I found this little saying that doesn’t give me a whole lot of comfort, but it did make me laugh: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”