Mice Act I

So after the fiasco called "moving" was over, I figured that we could start unpacking and be mostly finished and back to normal before my new job started on July 26.  Well, I should have known that things don't usually go according to schedule.  Around about the second day we were in our rented home, I began unpacking the kitchen.  Thankfully, the first box I opened was bakeware and cookware...not too bad, all of this went in lower cabinets.  As I progressed to glassware and dishes, I opened the upper cabinets.  I climbed up on the chair with a load of dishes and found....MOUSE TURDS!!!!!! Now, ordinarily, mice are kind of cute.  Big ears, cute little paws....but only when they are housed at Petsmart or out in a field somewhere. They are NOT at all cute when they are in a kitchen!!!  There were not just a few mouse turds, they were EVERYWHERE.  Piles of them.  It looked like mice had had the run of the place for a while. 

And then, a little lightbulb went off in my head....Greg had called me about two weeks before we moved to tell me that he had seen a mouse.

The normal course of action upon seeing a mouse is as follows:

1.  Buy a trap.
2.  Load the trap with something a mouse might find yummy, i.e. cheese, cracker, peanut butter.
3.  Set the trap.
4. Place trap where the mouse will come upon it.
5. Wait overnight for the mouse to walk unsuspecting to his or her death.
6.  Dispose of trap and mouse.
7.  Rejoice!

The normal course of action if you are my husband is as follows:

1.  Call your wife and tell her about the mouse.
2.  Sit paralyzed as far away from the mouse sighting as possible.
3.  Even though it is way after normal business hours, contemplate calling an exterminator.
4.  Nevermind the exterminator's place of business, google him and call his home number.
5.  Do nothing about the accumulation of turds or the fact that the mouse will keep coming back until you kill it.

When I asked my husband if he was going to get a trap he replied, "No!  Then I'll have to get rid of the mouse once it is caught!"  Oh well.  So, there I was in the kitchen with lots of dishes and glasses to wash because they were in close proximity to rodent feces, chewed on spaghetti to throw away, popcorn kernals to get rid of, leaking vegetable oil to throw away (the mouse punctured the bottle....trying to be healthy maybe?) and countless shelves to disinfect.  Fun times after such an uneventful, ha ha, moving trip.