mouse in the house

So, we get up for work not long after my parents leave.  I’m sitting in the kitchen and I can hear crucnh crunch crunch crunch.  A mouse chewing on something.  Crap, just what we need I think.  Calli was going shopping, so she picked up a mouse trap.  It was one of these girlie traps so that you don’t have to see the dead mouse.  Well, as the saying goes, everyone ones wants to build a better moustrap.  But it’s hard to improve on the original.  This one is this enclosed black thing that encases the mouse, and all plastic except the wire gate.  The first time I set it, and put it in a good place.  The next morning, the mouse ate the cheese out of it, and it didn’t go off!  That ticked me off.  By now he’s been in one of the cupboards and chewed a bunch of stuff up.  I’m getting ticked.  I open up the mousetrap, and file down an edge so it goes off easier.  He won’t get away this time.   I come out the next morning, and I can see the trap has gone off.  I look inside, and no mouse.  The food is gone, and the trap is broke in half!  Unbelievable.  So, now we’re out of a trap.  I set the my old reliable trap.  I get the tallest vase I can find, and drop a piece of peanut butter bread inside.  I get a board, and set it from the floor leading up to the edge of the vase.  It works like this.  The mouse comes in, tries to get to the food, and winds up getting trapped inside when he can’t get out.  I’ve used it at least twenty times before when I used to live in some of the old dumps when I was in college and bach’ing it.  Foolproof. 

 

The next morning, I look inside and the food is gone. Except for little peanut butter footprints all over inside, and on the sides of the vase.  The little bugger manged to jump out of a foot tall vase with inward sloping sides.  Unbelievable.  It’s a week later by now, and Calli is going grocery shopping again.  I tell her to get a real trap this time, nothing fancy.  We get 4 mousetraps, and I set them every place the mouse has been.  I’ll get him this time.  A week goes by, and nothing.  He won’t touch the traps.  By now he has raided our breadbox, and another cupboard.  I even caught the damn dog trying to steal the food off the traps a couple times.  It did help her food stealing habit.  But no mouse.  I know where he’s living.  It’s under the cupboards where I can’t get to.  I’m not going to rip out the cupboards.  The last step is poison.  I don’t like this because we have a dog and kids, but it’s the only thing left to try.  So I put it on the gorcery list.  Last night, I go over to a friends place with the girls.  The girls copme back about ten.  A few of the guys that are  left stay and play poker.  After an hour and a half game, I win the full pot from some good players.  It’s 1am, so I leave our friends house and stop by the local bar on the way home.  I put some quarters on the table, and proceed to clear the table.  2am, the lights come on.  I drive around 3 cops towing people for snow removal, and around two more in our alleyway "talking" witrh a group of hispanics.  I go in the house, and into the bathroom, open the lid and relieve myself of a nights worth of Jim Beam and cokes.  I make a pizza, watch some TV, play a little guitar, take another leak and go to bed. 

 

The next morning I get up and start to make some coffee.  There’s a note on the bathroom door "dead Mouse".  I look in, and there is a rat dead in the toilet.  Yes a rat.  Not the big scary kind that carry away chldren, but a little smaller than those white pet store rats.  It would explain why the mouse trap didn’t work, and why he became wise to the rest of the traps.  Rats are a lot smarter than mice.  It also shed new light on the balance of things in my life.  Apparently, the problem last two weeks (and probably the last two years) is that there is not enough testosterone in the house.  Evidently all I needed to do was go out, drink, kick some ass and take some names, and the newly balanced estrogen to testoerone level would take care of the rest.  The rat, sensing this new balance of power that he could not possibly overcome, decided to commit suicide rather than face my wrath the next day.  Smart move on his part.  I pick the rat out of the toilet by the tail and as I’m walking out of the bathroom, Calli comes up the steps.  She screams like a little girl, dances around, screams some more, and runs away.  Very uncharacteristic of the take no-shit wife I’m used to.  I think I’m going to like the new balance of power in the house.  🙂