Of Mice and Men

It was one week ago today when Trent and I were getting ready for an early bedtime because the next morning was the first day of school when we had our encounter with a mouse. We were both in our Pj's and had brushed our teeth, and our children were all asleep. I decided to run into the laundry room and just move the clothes to the dryer and start one more load. And just as I started the washer, I saw it. A small gray mouse run out from under the dryer just inches from my foot. So I did what every "Scientist, Naturalist" Mom would do-- which is -- scream at the top of my lungs! Trent peered through the laundry pass from the bathroom and asked what was wrong and then he came running. He had a plan, but I had to do exactly what he said. He grabbed a floor rug and a garbage can and closed the laundry room door and stuffed the rug along the crack so that no matter what the mouse would be contained. My job was to stand on the rug so that there was no way -- no how that that mouse was getting out. And then the fun began. Our laundry room is big enough that I have all the kids' craft supplies in plastic totes and drawer unitsstored in there. So we started moving craft stuff and laundry stuff and bending hangers to reach under the (now completely full of water and laundry) washer and dryer. In fifteen short minutes, the temperature in that room must have risen a good 10 degrees as Trent were both sweating a lot. And though we had had several chances the mouse was still evading capture. Our plan was to trap it under this smaller garbage can and then slide a file between the floor and the can to act as a lid and then carry the mouse outside to freedom. But things did not work so easily. . . We tried and tried and tried and tried and all we succeeded in doing was waking up Julianne. Who was talking to us through the laundry shoot upstairs and yelling at us to be quiet because she needed her sleep because she was starting school the next morning. We tried some more (a little quieter though) and after another 15 minutes had no luck when all of a sudden the mouse headed for the rug I was standing on and darn it if that little guy wasn't squeezing himself right underneath it in an effort to get out despite all the pressure I could muster on that rug. And right then we lost it . . . Trent grabbed a hammer and started banging that rug -- it had been so hard to catch it in that little room that we knew it would be a lost cause if it got out-- and so I am sad to say we are mouse killers. The whole time he was banging, I was trying hard not to throw up. The whole thing made me sick. And then he disposed of it and we spent the next hour and a half putting the room back together and cleaning it top to bottom. It led to a funny discussion of how that mouse got in the house and Trent said, "Well, who left the door open?" Which is especially funny if you have read the previous post "For the birds". Well, we were not quite as well rested on the first day of school as we would have liked to be, but what else could we do?????