Mouse in the house

“What’s with Rosie?” Aaron asked this morning as I walked out of the bedroom still half asleep after the kids jumped on us when their clock turned green at 6am.

Rosie was in the laundry room, barking whilst desperately scratching at the outside  door.  She went out her little doggie door a couple times, but quickly came back in again to scratch at the door.

“Maybe there’s a bug or something.”  I said.  She loves hunting things, and we get a lot of crickets in the house.  I probably should have investigated a bit, but it was my sleep in day, so I didn’t.  Instead, we ignored her while Aaron played with the kids and I made a cup of tea to take with me back to bed.

For ages, I could hear her scratching and barking.

When it was time for me to get up, the kids and I played fetch with her to get some of her excitement out.  Rosie chases after the ball like a little deer, bounding down the hallway randomly as she runs.  After I put the ball away, something small, black, and furry caught my eye.  It was scurrying very fast, but there was no mistaking it’s identity.  A mouse was making a break for the living room.  I only saw it for a few seconds before it disappeared behind the heavy bookshelf.

Naturally, I did what most girls would do in that situation: I yelled for Aaron.  “AARON, THERE’S A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE!!!!!!”  Not only that, I was yelling to the kids as well.  “GET ON THE COUCH!  BOTH OF YOU, GET ON THE COUCH!!!!”

Because obviously all mice are rabid people eaters whose sole purpose in life is to bite me and my children, and I don’t think the kids would be particularly fond of rabies shots. Or the plague. Or hantavirus. Or whichever other diseases mice could possibly carry.

Aaron helped me pull the shelf away from the wall, revealing the little brown mouse hiding behind it.  Stupidly I called Rosie around to the pulled out side.  She ran in, scaring the mouse out the other side.  It ran frantically from the shelf to under the couch, out of Rosie’s reach.

They may be cute, but disease carrying, pooping everywhere mice have no place in a house. Unless it’s in a cage…. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The kids were beside themselves with excitement, elated that they caught a glimpse of the cute little mouse.  Rosie ran around the couch, trying to find a way to fit herself under it so she could bag herself a hunting trophy.  We haven’t seen it since.  Maybe it’s still under the couch.  Maybe it’s under the shelf.  Maybe it’s in my bed.  I have no idea because we went to church this morning, via Bunnings to get mouse traps, so we were gone for almost 3 hours.  It could be anywhere by now.  Maybe there are more mice.  I don’t know.  Rosie did catch one outside a while ago (then she brought the dead mouse inside and put it in Aaron’s lap), after it/they chewed holes in the bag of dog food in the garage.

They also chewed holes in my potting soil.  And in the bag of dinosaur poop.  It’s not really dinosaur poop, it’s Dino fert, an organic fertiliser that has a cartoon dinosaur on the front and stinks. Daniel and Hannah called it dinosaur poop and the name stuck.

Yesterday I put all the soil, the dinosaur poop, and the lawn dressing into thick plastic garbage bins in the garage and swept up all the remnants that leaked out of the chewed bags.  I guess the mouse (mice maybe?) was hungry and came to the house instead.  It makes sense, but that doesn’t make it less annoying.

If only I’d listened to Rosie this morning when she so desperately wanted to get at the mouse that must have been between the screen door and the regular door in the laundry room.  Maybe then we wouldn’t have to set traps and dispose of a cute little annoying mouse probably with a broken neck from the snap trap.  Yuck.  But I don’t want it in the house either, so let’s hope the traps work.  Or that it comes out long enough for Rosie to get it. She would certainly love that.

If you enjoyed reading this, please vote for my blog. All you have to do is click the link below. That’s it… Clicking the link brings you to the Top Mommy Blogs home page. You don’t have to do anything else. Any clicks from my site to theirs is a vote.  THANKS!

Like my blog? ‘Like’ it on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mommy-Adventures/203964682967827?ref=tn_tnmn

Pin It You officially have my permission to pin this (as long as it links back to my site).  Just don’t act like you wrote it. Because you didn’t….

Copyright 2014 Sheri Thomson

The giant bug

Despite being fairly poor when I was little, we always had horses.  Having horses meant having big bags of grain in the barn.  My mom used to store them them in a small room in the little barn.  We didn’t have electricity in either of the barns so feeding the horses in the winter usually meant blindly plunging a cup or scoop or whatever my mom used at the time into the feed bag.  She wasn’t silly though, she kept the feed bags in thick plastic garbage cans to keep critters out.

My mom defied my theory that all women are secretly scared of the dark.  She’d go out in the pitch black night or morning every single day to feed the horses without so much as a flashlight.  It didn’t seem to bother her.  When I was a teenager and I started feeding the horses before school because mom had to work at ridiculous o’clock in the morning, I always turned the arena lights on, not caring that it was 5 o’clock in the morning and the blaring arena lights probably woke up all the neighbours.  They made me feel safe.

I think I was pretty young when it happened, so I’m not sure if I’m remembering the event, or the story of the event, but either way, I know it happened.  One morning (or maybe night, I was young at the time, so minor details are a bit fuzzy.) my mom went out in the dark to feed the horses.  She hadn’t been out there very long when she came back inside in a slight panic, blood oozing from her hand.

After removing the lid from one of the grain cans, as she did every morning and every night, she stuck her hand in the bin to scoop out some grain.  Except this time, something was lurking in the bin, feasting on the grain after it chewed through the thick plastic.  She had to go to the hospital to get rabies shots, stitches, and who knows what else.  I think it was a gopher, but don’t quote me on that.  My mom will read this (hopefully soon after I post it) and correct any wrongs in the comments, so have a look.

 

A gopher. Image courtesy of National Park Service.

When we first got Rosie, giant bags of puppy food were on special at Pet Barn.  I always like a bargain, so I bought one and put it in the garage, filling the small bag I keep in the house each time it ran out.

Mom getting her hand bitten by a something in the grain bin has always stuck in my memory though, so after I unzip the bag of dog food, I always have a look inside before sticking my hand in there to scoop the food out.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye after I opened the food bag the other night. A big, blackish blob scurrying on the wall.  A stupid, disgusting cockroach.  I rustled the bag of garden soil next to the dog food to scare him out, my foot ready for stomping.

The cockroach ran up from behind the bag, but suddenly, a little furry critter bolted out from behind the bag, seemingly at the speed of light.  It somehow dodged the weights bench, the bicycles, and all the camping gear whilst running faster than I’ve seen anything run before and hid in the corner of the garage.

My heart was beating a mile a minute.  There is a mouse in the garage.  Or maybe a baby rat.  

I lifted the almost empty bag of dog food, finding a pile of crumbs below.  The little bugger chewed it’s way to food.  I should have known better.  I should have had the food bag in a metal garbage can.  I didn’t think a mouse would get in the garage though.  How would it even get in there? It’s not like a barn with lots of open door, a bare earth floor, and wooden made out of chewable wood.  Our house is made of bricks, and the metal garage door goes right down to the ground.

Rosie would love to hunt the mouse, she hunts house crickets all the time.  Maybe she’s just trying to play with them, but her idea of play leads to death and dismemberment, which would obviously take care of the mouse.

“You can’t let her hunt the mouse,”  Aaron told me, “she’s still too sore, and she’s not supposed to run around yet.” Darn it, he was right.  Rosie was spayed only a couple days before and the vet said she had to rest for a week.

Tomorrow though, she is allowed to run around again, so mouse/rat, whatever you are, if you’re still there, watch out: Rosie is coming.

If you enjoyed reading this, please vote for my blog. All you have to do is click the link below. That’s it… Clicking the link brings you to the Top Mommy Blogs home page. You don’t have to do anything else. Any clicks from my site to theirs is a vote.  THANKS!

Like my blog? ‘Like’ it on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mommy-Adventures/203964682967827?ref=tn_tnmn

Pin It You officially have my permission to pin this (as long as it links back to my site).  Just don’t act like you wrote it. Because you didn’t….

Copyright 2014 Sheri Thomson