Mouse Deja Vu

My parents live in an old house out in the 'country' in Florida. Let's just say that they have quite the history with critters who have wanted to make the birdhouse their house too. When we were living in Florida, we would spend a lot of our weekends visiting Nana and Papa at the birdhouse. When we were there one time, they told us they knew they had a mouse in the house, but had not caught/killed it yet. Grrrrreat.

That night, I went to bed a little nervous KNOWING there was a mouse in the house. I am sure there have been mice in the house before, but not knowing for sure makes it a lot easier to pretend like there aren't any at all. In the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of scratching on the floor next to the bed. I quietly, yet frantically woke Tanner up and told him there was a mouse in our room. To make a long story short, Tanner and my Dad ended up doing battle with the mouse in the room until it met it's inevitable end while I sat in the hallway giggling while listening to them fight with this mouse. I never even saw the mouse in the end...I just heard it and that was enough for me.

Fast forward about 6 months, and here we are in Virginia, in an old house, kind of out in the country (we have a forest in our backyard...remember the deer?). So why should I be surprised when last night as Tanner is talking to his mom on the phone while standing in the kitchen, he says "Oh Mom, I gotta go, we have a mouse in the kitchen." What? Excuse Me? Say Again?

I had both the front door and back door open for the good portion of the day yesterday because it was such a nice day, but did I actually think a mouse might make it's way into the house? No. I hope that's how he got in because I don't even want to think that they have a way to get in I don't know about...even though that is probably the case. Tanner pulled all the appliances away from the walls in the kitchen and spent quite a bit of time trying to find it, but was unsuccessful. Grrrrrrreat.

I tried to take it all in stride thinking (and hoping!) that maybe it had worked it's way back outside somehow ignoring the fact that it was pouring rain outside and chances that the mouse would want to go back outside even under good conditions were probably not very high. But somehow I was able to compartmentalize everything and went to bed with no anxiety...until...

In the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of scratching on the floor next to the bed. I quietly, yet frantically woke Tanner up and told him there was a mouse in our room. He turned on the bedside lamp and I sat up in bed. Tanner was still completely out of it, but my ears were perked and I was waiting. And then I saw it. It went bounding across the open space of our bedroom floor and out the door. I did the classic female squeal, and Tanner got up to see if he could find it elsewhere in the house. No such luck, especially at 2 in the morning. The only funny part was when Tanner was moving stuff around our room looking for it, and he all of the sudden said "There's a mouse!" Cue for me to begin hyperventilation...and then he followed it up with "A computer mouse!"

We barricaded ourselves into our room, and of course, I was so completely grossed out and wired from the events that I couldn't sleep. Tanner asked me "so, you saw it run across the floor and out the door?" Yes sirree I did. Except now I was starting to wonder if maybe I was just a little schizophrenic instead. I would swear under oath under penalty of death that I saw that mouse go bounding across the floor, but does that mean it really happened? I also thought about the movie Ratatouille and how I spent most of the movie grossed out because I just couldn't get past the fact that they were rats among food. I don't care how cute they tried to make that thing, rodents are not cute and never will be. These are the things I think about at 2:30am.

Of course, every noise from that point on in the night would wake me up, and it didn't help that the rain storm was still going strong outside so it was hard to distinguish any inside noises from outside ones. It was a fitful nights sleep, and at one point I had a dream that me and my sister Melanie were old maids living in this house, and we came home from vacation to find it infested with mice. I woke up thinking that I would rather be awake all night than have dreams like that. Instead I just started to pray that Andrew wouldn't wake up wanting to feed because I did not want to leave the room. Andrew didn't wake up until just before 6am! Yahoo...8 hours straight! It was actually light outside a little bit so I didn't feel so scaredy.

So my husband is now off at work, and it's just me, my kids, and the mouse hanging out for the day (wherever he is). I have no car since it is in the shop, so we are really going to be hanging out all day today together. I told Tanner to make sure to pick up some mouse traps on his way home from work. Stay tuned...