Mice

We’ve known there were mice in the garage since we moved in. However, up until last night we had never seen one in the house.

While making dinner last night, I grabbed the garbage can under the kitchen sink only to discover mice peeking out of it. Tiny heads. Beady eyes. I put the can down on the deck outside while one of the little buggers crawled out and hid at the base of the cabinets and tried to get our cat, Dexter, to take care of the situation, but our dog Lucy would not allow it and instead thwarted my efforts to eliminate the problem quickly. In the meantime, at least one mouse escaped my sight; the other either ran off into the backyard or ended up in the trash can outside. I spotted the area under the sink where they were coming through, a quarter sized hole adjacent to the plumbing into the wall, and as a temporary fix plugged it with some plastic grocery bags.

Later that night as my husband is checking random areas a mouse could hide, his first check, in the cabinet under the aquarium, reveals the rodent in all his miniscule grotesqueness. This time the dog was locked in a room so the cat could prowl and stalk his prey. Half an hour later, and with the kitchen in disarray, the mouse was dead with the smashing of a shoe. My shoe. From my hand. Before we could sweep the mouse up and fling it into the forest behind the house, the cat quickly grabbed the mouse and scurried off into the living room where we had to try and get it out of his mouth. I’m happy to report some forest critter probably had a lovely meal, but we’re both a bit creeped out about any mice I may not have seen that might still be roaming freely.