If you wanna feel better about your family, just read about ours...

Starring: a dad, a mom, a son & daughter-in-law, a daughter & son-in-law, another daughter & son-in-law, 1 teen, 1 grandson, 3 granddaughters, 4 dogs, and a whole lot of love.






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Monday, August 18, 2014

Mouse Trap

I fully expected my next blog entry to be about our daughter's wedding that took place on Saturday.  (Pending her permission and approval after they return from their honeymoon next week, of course.)  But as it so happens with our family, material presented itself yesterday.  Uninvited material, mind you, but material nonetheless.

Ron had to work, I brought Kearstin and Caymen home from church and all I wanted was to take a long uninterrupted nap.  With the girls under strict orders to allow that to happen, I'd no sooner dozed off in my bed with Caymen nestled beside me, when Kearstin tapped me awake and said, "There's something moving in my tote bag."  In that moment of exhaustion, this did not seem justifiable to waking me up.  So I said, "Put the tote bag in the garage."  A few minutes later, I was awakened by her whisper in my ear, "It's loose in my room."
And with that, she had my attention.

It would appear that we inadvertently brought the church mouse home with us after the wedding.  Church mouse or not, nobody was going to sleep till the thing was dead, so we armed ourselves for war.  Me with a broom, Kearstin with a mop and both of us clunking around in pairs of Ron's gigantic tennis shoes because they seemed safer than our size 8's that would leave us vulnerable to an attack from the enemy. 

We closed ourselves inside her room leaving Caymen safely in the hallway. And the hunt began.  Poke something, watch for movement, prepare to scream.  Repeat.  This went on until we found ourselves facing the open closet where long dresses hung on a low bar with material pooling on the floor.  Using the end of my broom, I pulled the dresses to the side, he dashed out of the closet and before I could react, we watched him squeeze under the crack of the bedroom door into the hallway where Caymen's screams joined ours.  And then we all screamed and screamed and screamed.  I finally whipped open the door, saw him trying to squeeze under the bathroom door so I started swatting at him, still screaming...and maybe peeing a little...as Caymen ran downstairs locking herself in my bedroom, Kearstin stood frozen in the hallway and quick as a flash, he turned around and bolted back into her closet, thus earning him the name 'Quick Silver.'

Time to regroup...and take a pee break.  The crack under the door is a problem.  The obvious solution (to us) was to block the bottom of the door using 2 wall hangings.  They didn't completely block the crack under the door, but (in our minds) their shape as well as the hooks protruding from the top provided a maze that he'd have to go around and (according to us) mice suck at mazes.  We closed ourselves back in the bedroom and set up our mouse-proof maze.  We studied our handy work and I said, "If he beats us through that before we beat him to death, he deserves to be loose in our house."
From my lips to Quick Silver's ears.  Gauntlet thrown.

Weapons aimed at closet, the cycle began.  Broom pulls out one dress, we grab it by the hanger and move it to the other side.  Dress by dress.  We finally found him hiding under the material of a long purple dress.  I went to work with my broom while Kearstin cried, "You're killing him with my birthday dress!!"
No...I was killing him in her birthday dress.  She's so dramatic.

When all movement stopped, I pulled out the birthday dress, gave it a little shake, and...nothing.  So we continued pulling the dresses out one by one until we got to the very last dress.  Her tutu dress.  Covered in silver glitter.  Seemed appropriate somehow.  Preparing to finish his life in a puff of glitter, I pulled the dress aside as movement by the door caught my eye just in time to see him round the last hook of our maze and squeeze himself under the door and out into the hallway.

Damn you, Quick Silver!

Beating us at our own maze, by the time we moved it out of the way and opened the door, he was out of sight and gone to who knows where.  Kearstin said, "Maybe he'll eat the poison behind the fridge."  Then I reminded her that Tia already did that and was forced to vomit it up all over our garage.  How soon we forget when we're not the one inducing with peroxide.

We were forced to wait till Ron got home and filled him in on our ordeal in which he wasted entirely too much time asking us ridiculous questions about why we thought his shoes that we could easily trip and fall down in would be safer than our own and where our heads were at when deciding to create a maze instead of blocking the crack with a blanket or pillow.
Stay focused here, Chuckles.  There's a mouse loose in our house.

Then he stripped down to his boxers, made himself dinner and went downstairs to watch tv.  Did you not hear our story, sir?!

An hour later, I heard Kearstin's screams from upstairs, immediately triggering Caymen's and my own.  Ron calmly got out of bed, grabbed a shoe and a Walmart bag, followed Kearstin's pointing finger into the bathroom, closed the door, and a minute later, exited the bathroom with 'TMFKAQS' (The Mouse Formerly Known As Quick Silver) in the bag.

When Ron gave us a look of disgust I said, "Obviously, we slowed him down for ya.  You're welcome."