revisiting the mouse topic

Mice are small, tricky, gnawing creepy creatures. After the last mouse post, which I emailed to Mouse Hunter Hubby, came a trip to the hardware store. He came home this time bearing much better gifts. Steel wool. Great Stuff expanding foam sealant. And a bundle of fresh traps and poison bait. He filled the hole. I danced a jig. He baited and lay traps under the house. He also lay traps IN the house, to be safe.

Since the Great Sealing of the Hole (I really SHOULD post a picture, there is a great *poof* of foam now about 10" of foam cloud surrounding the hole its quite funny)our indoor traps have not snapped. Not once. Nothing has been chewed (except the coffee filters in the trash but thats my DOG she eats used coffee filters go figure).

This is good news, except, there HAVE been issues.

1:10 AM on a Tuesday Chris's alarm has gone off (he works a graveyard shift) and I opt to use the bathroom before he gets in the shower. I prefer to use *just* the light from the bathroom night light as I am going right back to bed- so why hurt my eyes? There, beside the toilet, is a dead (sleeping?) mouse. Chris is coming to get in the shower. "Chri-i-i-s lo-o-o-o-k! a mmmmouse" He looks, he grunts, he grabs paper towel and comes to clean it up. Flicks on the light -my cue to look away, I do not like to see the mice. I stood guard so it couldn't escape- the way dead mice are prone to doing. I turn away and Chris laughs. Taps me. Points. To the toy tow truck from Cars. Its towing arm thingy- not a tail. Its truck body- not a mouse body. Its plastic face- not dead. Chris says "thats your MOUSE?" laughing at me. Yeah? well who's wearing the paper-towel gloves huh?

5 AM on a Friday. Chris is at work, because the really GOOD stuff happens when its pitch black and the Big Strong Man is gone. I am bolt upright in my bed. Baby to the left, little boy to the right. Two precious sleeping (drooling, kicking) innocents in bed with me. I am listening to FRANTIC gnawing. Incessant for several minutes- and then... nothing. But 15 or 20 minutes later it starts again. Nuerotic, fast paced chewing. In. MY. BEDROOM. Not just anywhere either, oh no, Right Beside The Door! I have spent an hour trying to believe it is nothing. Trying to make it be leaves outside the window- on the other side of the room. Something. Anything. Just NOT an army of mice coming into my ROOM. They'll scurry on my bed. They may well gnaw on the tender lips of my babies while we sleep! Well, if we ever sleep again that is. I can't get away from the sound, from the mice. I know now that Mouse One is chewing as fast and hard as he can and then when he can't chew One More Bite he scurries away to find Mouse Two. This accounts for the pauses. But I can't do anything. The light switch is next to the door and THATS where they are chewing!
There is however one more thing over there, by the door, by the light switch. A vent. Eventually even *I* will run into a rational thought. It hit me, slowly, that this chewing happened ONLY when the vent blew. The pauses were always and only when the vent fell silent. I very bravely turned on the light on the other side of the bed. I bravely held up that lamp. I stoicly verified the existance of a fluttering scrap of paper on the vent. In a cold sweat I removed the paper. Which is a VERY effective way to kill imaginary mice.

A few days later though, the mice REALLY WERE chewing their way into my room. On the other side. Or wait. Maybe not. Maybe thats the tube from Chris' CPAP machine rubbing on the table edge.

Some nights I hear them in the livingroom. I startle. Then I realize it is Dust (the bunny) eating his plastic igloo house again.

At nearly daybreak as I poured my coffee my dog wanted out. But laying in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry room (which leads to the back door) was The Biggest Dead Mouse I Ever Saw. Until it turned out to be a small black box and an electrical cord.

The traps under the house snapped daily at first. But after a few days they fell silent. The poison disappeared, but the replacement poison just sits there, next to the empty traps.

My son hides his stuffed rat under my pillow. My husband hides in the laundry room with cotton balls and a straw. He blows the balls across the kitchen floor while I try to do dishes. They think they are SO funny.

The baby probably won't go trick or treating, he gets sick too easily. Chris says the other 3 kids will go out as Three Blind Mice. Oh funny. Ha Ha Ha (says she with the carving knife).