Unwelcome Visitor

So, a little while back, David and I were sitting in the living room. It was getting to be pretty late, but David had Biology homework to finish up and I was up for moral support. As David worked on his diagrams showing mitosis and meiosis, I was just staring ahead into the kitchen when I saw it. It surprised me at first and it didn't exactly register what it was...I gasped and pointed and David looked up just in time to verify that I wasn't seeing things. We had a mouse in our house!! YUCK!

This is a re-enactment of what I saw (using a rubber mouse that I have no idea where we got it).

Immediately the homework was postponed so David could go see if he could catch it, but the unwelcome visitor had disappeared. We searched around and found the hole where it must be getting in from the crawlspace downstairs. Now I was totally grossed out! That yucky mouse had been walking on the same kitchen floors that Mason plays on every day. I worried to David that he might run into it one day get bitten. Of course, David had to inform me that if that happened, they would give Mason a rabies shot, no questions asked. Then he proceeded to tell me that a rabies shot actually consists of 9 very long needles that they stick in your abdomen. (David knows a lot of random trivia). So...the next while or so I spent gazing at my little boy's pictures on our walls and welling up with tears imagining him having to go through such a terrible ordeal.

Doesn't it make you sad to think of this innocent sweetheart getting bit by a mouse? (The story of why he's wet will be in another blog) :)

Anyways, this just happened to be the night in the week that David has the most homework, so by the time he finished it, it was around midnight. I didn't expect him to go get traps that night, but, being the protector of the family, he decided to make a midnight run to the grocery store and picked up some mousetraps and DeCon...so at least we could sleep semi-easier that night. The next morning, the first thing that David did was to go and check the traps, and I had no objections to that. I was in bed, and half expected him to come up the stairs with a dead mouse dangling from a trap. I know this sounds gross...but that's what my dad used to do when I was younger, so I just expected David to, as well. So, of course, when David came and dangled this: in my face, I screamed and hid my head under the covers.

Sadly, no mice had fallen victim to our traps that night.

I was so grossed out to even go in our kitchen, it was terrible. My morning consisted of cleaning out the bottom of our pantry, where we were pretty sure the mice liked to go. I found several packets of microwave popcorn that were chewed all the way through and that confirmed our suspicions. Here is a picture of the floor. They didn't touch the bags of rice or flour...the only thing that they got into was the popcorn.

Well, probably 4 days later, David was at a church meeting and I heard one of the traps snap in the kitchen. Mason and I were in the living room and I couldn't bring myself to go into the kitchen for fear of running into a hurt or bleeding mouse carrying around a mousetrap. When David got home, he confirmed that the mouse was dead, and that it probably died instantly. We haven't caught any since then, so hopefully there was only the one.

I hate bugs and anything rodent-like, I won't even touch my niece's hamster when I'm over there. What would I have done without David in this whole situation? I don't even want to think about it.