Mouse-capades

***Disclaimer! Do not read this post if you are particularly fond of mice or any type of rodent, as you will not find love for them here. Instead, click onto my "Happiness Is...." posts, you will find much more joyful reading there.... Mice haters read on.***





This last month has seen the fall and capture of Bin Laden, the end of Autumn and start of Winter, and the biggest party of the year, where my sister and I organised my Dad's surprise 70th birthday.



And then there were the mouse adventures of Hubbie and I.



Yes, the mouse. The mouse that had scarred us like no tomorrow.



It all began a couple of Fridays ago.

One Friday afternoon, Hubbie and I had made plans to catch up with his boss and his wife. They were going to come to our place after 6pm, and then we were going to make our way to a local pizza place for dinner. I had to drop off some presents to Blonde's parents, as they were heading overseas to stay with their daughter for a couple of months, and so I wanted them to pass on some presents from Red and I to her.



Well, the drop-off didn't really happen. I came to her parents very dark and apparently vacant looking house, and called Blonde's sister, saying, "I'm in front of your parents!" only to find out that they had left for overseas that morning. Apparently when her mum said for me to come on Friday, she probably actually meant that they were leaving on the Friday. Oh well. Blonde would get her presents in July when she visited us here.



So off I drove back home, half-laughing at myself, thinking 'wait til Hubbie hears about this mix up.' I'd left him at home, and knew that once I got back we would slowly start getting ready for that night.



I was a bit peeved off when I got to the front door, loaded with presents I thought I'd have dropped off already, and struggling with my keys, wondering 'where is he?' as Hubbie will often open the front door for me when he hears me.



I finally got the door open, and seeing the kitchen light on, was going to call out to him 'guess what happened?'



Instead he beat me to it. All I heard was "Don't be alarmed, but there's a mouse in here."



Because of his precaution, I wasn't too freaked out. And I wasn't so surprised either. I'd almost brought this predicament onto myself, I felt, as I thought of the past few weeks. Twice the previous week, in the lead up to my Dad's birthday during my baking marathons in the kitchen, I'd seen a mouse run through our backyard through our large sliding door windows.

I'd been very suspicious then. We have a sizeable gap on one end of the door that leads to the garage. So once something, anything was in the garage, it wasn't hard to imagine it not finding its way inside. That, coupled with a big talk Hubbie and I had had with a family member about recent mice problems in our area, gave me a huge feeling that I was going to attract something very unwelcome with my worries.



I came into the kitchen, and Hubbie was definitely, very freaked out. I wasn't so much at this stage. Disgusted and shocked yes, still slightly in denial perhaps, as I hadn't yet seen the rodent.



He had actually lost sight of it. He'd been in the kitchen, and had turned around to see it's ugly tail flit across the sink/bench and behind the microwave. It had then run behind the stereo when he had moved the microwave, and now couldn't find it. It had apparently 'disappeared' behind the stereo.



I was instructed to stand and keep watch on one side of the stereo while Hubbie stood at the other, so we had all corners covered. I was getting icky by this stage and had to stand on a chair: I couldn't be on the ground if it suddenly sprung out at me. Yuck, shudder.



I was peering behind the stereo from my birds-eye view, and Hubbie was moving around the stereo, speakers and cables from the other side: nothing.

Hubbie was convinced he hadn't lost it, yet we couldn't see it anywhere. Occasionally we could hear something, like scurrying, but at the same time couldn't find the source of where it was coming from.



I don't know how he realised, but suddenly Hubbie turned to me, flashlight shining in one hand, long knife sharpener in the other, whispering, eyes shining bright "it's in the speaker!"



"How is it in the speaker?"



"It is, I can hear it!"



Then we realised. The small speaker hole, located at the base, was large enough for a freaking mouse to go through. It must have snuck in when Hubbie was looking for it from one side, and slid in undetected. 'Til now.



We realised if it was inside, we would have to try get the speaker to an outside area to get rid of the mouse. We were freaking out a bit more at this stage, especially given Hubbie was going to have to pick up and carry the mouse-filled speaker (there was no way in hell I would do it!)



I got an old tea towel that was in the laundry hamper, and he wrapped it around the base of the speaker, so that when he picked it up the hole was covered and the mouse couldn't escape. I quickly opened the sliding door for him, and he placed it in the middle of our backyard area, in the very dim light.



Here lied the problem. It was now so dark, that we could just barely see outside, and that was with our faint backyard light on. We didn't know how we could tell if the mouse had escaped from the speaker (which is what we wanted, we just didn't want it inside), and on top of that it was beginning to consistently drizzle.



And our not even 1 year old speaker was getting wetter and wetter.



We didn't know what to do. Hubbie went back outside, grabbed it and brought it in, the speaker that hadn't been out there more than a minute.



And he started to shake it. Hubbie was like "I don't think it's in there," SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE, and you could hear a faint moving inside, like the small parts of a piece of equipment jiggling around or cables moving. I stood there, unconvinced, wanting, almost, about to say "I don't think that's cables."



SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE.



SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE.



And then with one of the shakes, the mouse sprang out of the speaker hole, running towards our lounge room. It was already a full 2-3 metres in front of us before we had a chance to react, that's how fast it was. I gave a high-pitched squeal, Hubbie dropped the stereo and began taking long, quick strides, trying to balance and cover as much ground as possible and try get as good an aim at the mouse as he could. I will never for the rest of my life forget how funny he looked running after that mouse. Never.




But of course, the mouse was too quick, and appeared to have disappeared beneath the couches.



By this stage, my denial had dissipated, and was quickly replaced by hysteria.

"Oh my God! There's a mouse, in our house! How disgusting! I feel so gross! I can't believe it! Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God...."



Again, Hubbie ordered me to stand at one end of the lounge room while he went to the other, so he could search for it beneath the couch. I couldn't stand to stand, and once again brought over a chair so I could be at aerial height.



Hubbie looked and looked. He swept the floor, beneath the lounge, coffee table and TV unit with the torchlight. He moved the lounge and the coffee table. I wasn't convinced and was forced to look under the couch as well. There was no mouse. At one point I thought I saw something move near the stairs, but then realised it couldn't have run right in front of us to the stairs, we would have seen it.



I was starting to freak out. There was no mouse, I didn't know where it was, and I didn't like NOT KNOWING WHERE THINGS WERE. NOT BEING IN CONTROL. I hated it. And I was really hating this mouse for beating us.



We went through a lot of scenarios. Where it could have been. We decided and I very reluctantly agreed, that after it ran under the couch, it must have run along the back wall there and come upon the very door that leads to the garage, the one with the sizable gap on one side. It would have made its escape, away from the two mad people screaming and chasing at it.

The other scenario could have been that it was still under the couch. However Hubbie stressed to me (after I stated that we could not under any circumstances have his boss and wife over in the small chance that there was a disgusting rodent in our house) that in a room full of noisy people a mouse wouldn't be so stupid as to run out in front of us and say hello. He said we couldn't cancel on them, especially since they had gone to the lengths to get their children babysat that night to go out with us. I was really mad and stressed. But I knew I had to agree.



However I had my guidelines. I instructed Hubbie to get any drinks we would need out from our 'drinks fridge' in the garage. Then, he would close up the gap in the door leading to the garage (from the garage side so you couldn't tell) with my laundry hamper tea towels, to prevent any mouse re-entering the house.



And then we were going to like madmen get ready, in less than half an hour, returning furniture to its original places, putting our mess away, cleaning up broken glass (a glass broke when we were searching for the mouse in the kitchen) and any other CRAP mess the mouse had brought upon us in our hunt for it.

What had become a time bomb had within half an hour turned into a well-kept, clean and modern environment. I was muttering to myself "If these walls could talk."

And so the rest of the night passed by relatively effortlessly. We had our friends over, went out for dinner and then went to my parents quickly to get some stuff, which we'd been planning to do the whole time - this worked out rather favourably for us. We told them about the story - and Dad gave us 2 mouse traps of his: one for the garage, as that's where we assumed the mouse had ended up, and one for the house, just in case it hadn't escaped. That part I didn't want to think about. Hubbie decided he'd put the house trap near the kitchen, his reasoning being that if a mouse were looking for food, that would be the most logical place for it to go.

I was whinging a whole lot to my parents. Look, it wasn't so much that I was scared of it. Yes a part of me was, although I knew it wasn't going to run up and bite me. But its movements were unexpected, and wherever I was faced with something, someone or a situation in which I felt helpless, I got frustrated and angry. This mouse had come into our house with no invite, and had made me feel all icky and disgusting. My Mum made me feel better though: "The mouse just wants food! He's not going to come into your room to look at your perfumes!" We all laughed at that, and the ridiculous statement sort of put it into perspective for me. Of course she was right. Mice went to food, and there was no food in our bedroom.

...

We were very hesitant, to say the least, walking through the house throughout Saturday. But as they say, 'out of sight, out of mind.' And we were beginning to think that the mouse had really gone, as there was no sighting of it anywhere in the house.

Sunday early morning came, and Hubbie got up to go to work. It was about 6am, but his movements stirred me, and it was almost as if I knew what he was going to do. I heard him open the door leading to the garage, and pause. Then he walked up a part of our stairs. He called out to me "the trap went off."

"Alright. Is the mouse there?"

"Yep, it's dead."

Relief flooded over me. I was still freaked out - knowing that the mouse had been in there, somewhere the whole time. However knowing it had been caught made me feel safe, and I fell asleep again.

I was sleeping so nicely. I woke up a bit about 8am but fell asleep again. Something entered my dream. It was scurrying, twitching noises. I opened my eyes. The noise was coming from under the bed.

I shot upright in bed, and looked towards Hubbie's alarm clock. It was 9.00am. The noises had stopped. I sat there, frozen, and flung the blankets off of me.

Calm down Miss S, I thought to myself. You dreamt it. There's nothing under the bed. The mouse was caught. There's nothing under your bed.

You dreamt it, my internal voice continued. You were dreaming about weird noises, but now that you've woken up, you can't hear him. Because you stopped dreaming.

As much as I repeated the calming thoughts, the nagging just wouldn't go away. I hadn't dreamt it. I had woken up and heard the end sound of some scurrying under my bed. Like something was crawling right under the mattress, walking against the walls.

I got up. I swung my feet wide from the edge of the bed. I walked to the doorway, and crouched down on my hands and knees, to scan from a distance if anything was under the bed.

When I saw the large lump under the bed I got a small heart attack, until I realised that it was just a spare blanket that we sometimes use to hang in front of our blinds in summer when the morning light becomes too bright. I moved my eyes around, adjusting to the dim light under the bed, until I came to the bedside drawer. My bedside drawer.

There was a very small, roundish object, under the bedside drawer, right up against the wall.

My breathing increased. I tried to rationalise. What could be under there? The cables from my alarm clock and my lamp? No, they wouldn't bundle into a circle like that. I stared the bundle down, knowing full well that if it moved I would scream and shout like no tomorrow.

I remembered Hubbie's flashlight was in his bedside drawer, and so I quickly and tentatively walked over there, still trying to keep a view of the floor in our room. Although it's a good brand flashlight (that you can tell from how freaking heavy it is) for some reason the light flickers when it's on, and we've barely used it. So I'm desperately knocking it lightly with my hand, pleading with it, as the light flickers on, then off. "Please work, please please please...."

Finally it stayed on. I swung the light under the bedside drawer, to see that it was a definite object, no bunch of cables there. But I still couldn't work out what it was, crouching from the other end of the room.

So I stepped onto the bed, walked over to the wall side up near the pillows, and shone the light down, behind the drawer, pressing my face against the wall to see.

And I saw 2 little eyes glinting in the light.

I started to gingerly step from one side of the bed to its end, and as softly yet as quickly as I could, I stepped off and closed the door behind me.

"Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God. There's a mouse in my room. Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God." I remembered my Mum's words from a few days earlier. The mouse had come into my bedroom to see my perfumes!

I was in full flight mode, with a good dose of fight, as I remembered the mouse trap we had in the kitchen. I carefully picked it up, terrified it was going to go off, and ran back up the stairs.

I opened the door slowly. Set the mouse trap down near the door. Checked again under the drawer. Yep, mouse was still there. Closed the door and down the stairs I ran.

I hadn't even had a chance to grab my nightgown, and I wasn't gonna chance going into my bedroom again. First thing in my manic hysteria and disbelief: call Hubbie.

I got put through and immediately spoke the words he'd only days before spoken to me: "don't be alarmed, but there is a mouse in our bedroom, under our bed."

I explained how I came to hear/see it. I knew there wasn't much he could do since he was at work, but I just had to vent my frustrations and fears, and we hung up, me sensing the dread and disappointment in his voice. We'd both thought we'd got it, the mouse. But it seems as if there was another one waiting in the wings....

I ended up calling my parents, and they came over shortly after. While I waited I ate cereal on the couch, the throw gathered around me, throwing suspicious looks towards the stairs, wondering if and when I would hear a snap!

When they arrived, I went up with Dad to do some investigating. I never intended on going too far, as just from opening the door I could tell the mouse was still not caught - the trap was empty. My Dad decided to bring the mouse trap 'closer' to the mouse behind the drawer, and in horror I realised he meant CLOSE. He was taking the mouse trap right up to the drawer, as if 10 centimetres from, against the wall. I was calling out "Dad, it will run!" and freaking out, when the mouse ran along the length of the back wall. I screamed. It disappeared behind the bed along the wall again. My Mum called out to me from downstairs "come here Miss S, don't watch." As I quickly shut the door and ran I heard my Dad calling out "well, where do you want me to put the trap then?"

After sitting downstairs and freaking out for a bit, Dad came downstairs, saying that it was going to be impossible for him to catch the mouse, there had to be 2 people in the room. I told him to wait until Hubbie got home and they could do it together. Lo and behold it was as if Hubbie read my mind. He was owed some hours off, and so took that day as an opportunity to come home to our mouse crisis. He called me, and said he was on his way.

When Hubbie came home, the formalities were few: hello, how are you - let's go upstairs. Up he and Dad went, into a room already with 2 mouse traps (Dad had set up another) to catch the mouse. I was getting grossed out when they started asking for footwear to borrow in order to 'catch' it. Ew. Double Ew. Triple Ew. Ew, ew, ew.

Mum and I were downstairs at the table, talking all things mice. At one point we heard Hubbie go "ohhhhh" in deep realisation, and I wondered whether they had caught it. But still nothing. And then there was a loud noise. I stood up, waiting to hear the opening of the door, and soon it came followed by my Dad's asking for a bag. It was dead. Mouse no more.

They told us that it was impossible to catch. Just when they went to take a swing at it as it flew out from one end of the room to another, it was gone before their arm was even coming down. They said it never would have gotten caught if it weren't for the mouse trap. It ran straight into it.

After the whole debacle, we sat around drinking tea and eating cookies, while I recounted my morning horror again to them all in full detail. It was a story I was never going to forget. We were still wondering how the mouse had gotten into the bedroom, and I suggested that back when Hubbie and I were chasing it on the Friday night, maybe it had gone up the stairs somehow, like I thought I'd seen from the corner of my eye. Maybe it waited behind a couch, and then when we were gone went searching upstairs for food. The one caught in the garage that morning, that one I believe was the partner, coming in search of its mate. Although we were pretty satisfied that being a couple, there shouldn't be anymore, we still kept a few mouse traps around: one in our bedroom, one in the garage and one in the extra bedroom.

Why the extra bedroom you may ask? Well shortly following the whole mouse catching episode, we curiously went around the rooms, and realised that the mouse that had been in our bedroom had been in our spare bedroom with the easter eggs that couldn't fit into our pantry, and had knawed through a Lindt bunny's head, leaving bits of gold foil around the carpet. It was so disgusting, but it made sense: it went from room to room looking for more food. Why it didn't just stay in that room and keep eating, is beyond me. Maybe they're not so smart.

A day later, and back in that same spare bedroom I realised another Lindt bunny had had a section of it's ears eaten. We were freaked out, because we hadn't noticed it the day before, making us believe there was still a mouse in the house! Hubbie and I went on a massive excavation, moving all objects in all rooms and searching within and behind all furniture, nooks and crannies. Nothing. It left us with a sense of relief, but that doubt over why we hadn't noticed the 2nd eaten bunny earlier was grating on us, making us think constantly "what if?"

Hubbie sent me the best msg a few days later. I was at work, he at home, and he sms'd me this:
"I also put foil around the chocolate upstairs to see whether we still have company. Left the room door open to kindly invite him in."

His ploy being if the mouse were there, it would have to eat through fresh foil again, and we would then know for sure that there was another mouse. Fortunately for us nothing else has come up since, no sighting, and just yesterday Hubbie movied the mouse traps into the garage. We believe we are now mouse free!

What have we learned from this situation? Never leave sizeable gaps under any of your doors. Dad was able to patch it up immediately for us, and we discovered there was a decent hole in the brick wall of our garage that has now been filled in with a few chunks of wood.

Also, we've heard over the last while that there has been many, many, many reports of an influx of mice entering homes and backyards all over our region, due to the amount of rain that has been falling. It makes us feel that much better knowing the mice didn't necessarily choose our house because we were grotty (we're not) - rather they're all just running.

But like I say to the bugs that enter our home, before I smack them down with my shoe

"Why didn't you stay outside? Outside I don't touch you; in here, all bets are off!"

And so ends our Mouse-capade Adventure....