Country Mouse Goes to the City…(almost)

When we were in Nebraska last week, there was a crispness in the air that signaled the arrival of fall weather. One day, when getting something out of the cupboard under the sink I found popcorn kernels which told me we had a furry invader that had made his way into the rig. It’s that time of the year when the mice like to find a warm place to hang out. I got out one of the cheap wooden mousetraps that we had and when I tried to set it, the spring blew apart and just about took my index finger off. We left for Ohio with the stowaway on board. Not sure if this little critter knew he was about to embark on a cross country adventure but off we went.

We stopped by a Wal-Mart, on the way and picked up an easy set mouse trap that didn’t look like it would impose bodily harm if it malfunctioned. Malfunction though was the case with one of the two traps…it wouldn’t set. Returned it for another set and got them armed with peanut butter and put one in the basement, where I found other evidence of his escapades and one under the sink. When we’d stop for the night, I’d check to see if we were successful in catching our little stowaway. The one under the sink…nope…the one in the basement…no where to be found. I panicked as I thought of what a week or two of a decomposing critter in the basement would yield…..ewwwww ! Yesterday, I was trying to clean up the trike and asked Linda if she could perform a search and recover mission in the basement. Item by item, she started pulling things out of the basement. Finally she found it. Talk about covering some distance….apparently when that sucker snapped on our little passenger, it did a Greg Louganis style flip over the folded ladder and landed in a container in the front of the basement. I’m the bug squasher and dead mouse retriever in the family so I needed to pay coroner and retrieve the body. Case closed…

This morning Linda got up early and was doing something on the laptop when I got up. I came into the kitchen and something looked odd on the floor. It looked like a tea bag but upon closer inspection it was an itty bitty mouse, no more than an inch and a half long. It just sat there…oh no, I thought. Did a whole family of them climb on board in Nebraska or what ? I looked around for something to whack it with and finally decided on a shoe. I gently thumped it and it just fell over….like it was comatose or already dead. Hmmm…Don’t know where he came from or why Linda didn’t see it. Hoping he’s the last intruder. Got the traps reset, just in case. Our little stowaways were on their way to the east coast but got their visas revoked.