This house is ours

Ever seen the Nicole Kidman movie "The Others"? It's about a house that's haunted, and one of her lines is "This house is ours!" in hopes of driving out the ghosts. My wife's going to kill me for blogging about this, but I had a "This house is ours" moment this week. For about three weeks, there's been an unwanted guest in our house. At first I didn't believe her, but afterall, she was right when it came to our last houseguest. This time, instead of a chipmunk, it was a mouse. I'd had enough of thinking that stupid thing was in my house, but the couple of traps I'd set last week hadn't produced any results. I went and bought several more and placed them every place I thought he'd possibly be. I even told Jenny that the thought had crossed my mind to borrow a cat from someone. I hate cats almost as much as I hate having rodents anywhere near my house.

Finally, Sunday night, I GOT HIM! THIS HOUSE IS OURS! He'd gotten stuck on one of the glue traps, and he was freaking out. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were filled with fear. Then, I felt something. He was...kind of cute. What have I done? He really was adorable, and I had done this to him. I quickly disposed of him. But for the rest of the night, I felt really bad. Then the boys asked if I would read them a Christmas book. They picked out Merry Christmas, Big Hungry Bear. It's a story about an adorable little mouse who, from the kindness of his heart, decided to share his Christmas with a big hungry bear. Great, kids, as if I didn't feel bad enough already.

In other mice news, we got a new computer...with a cordless Bluetooth mouse. Yipee! Now if I see another mouse, I can chuck the other mouse at it from across the room.



UPDATE: "he" was I think a "she". The reason I think this is that I checked the traps again last night, and I got another one. This one was dead, looked as if it was taking a nap. Because of that, I didn't feel as bad as I did when I found the live one. So I think the first one was maybe the mom because she was facing the area under the stairs. The one last night, the much smaller one, I think was a baby who went looking for mom who said she was running out for some take-out, and never came back. Hopefully this is the end of them, but just in case there are some out-of-town guests who were over for the holidays, the traps are still out and I'll get every last stinkin' one of them.

If you were thinking of coming over anytime soon, and are now reconsidering, thinking that we're gross slobs who live in a rodent-infested dump, that's totally understandable. We don't mind if you want to cancel. You can just send us the cash you were planning on spending to come see us. Depending on who you are, we might enjoy that more.