Of Mice and Mommies

I made a new layout last night. I don't have any pictures for this one, and I don't think that I'm the best at making no picture layouts, but I needed to scrap this story. The story behind this is actually hilarious- now that it's been almost two months since it happened.

We live in a house that gets field mice. I'm okay with that- as long as they aren't in my food or crawling where they shouldn't be. It was a Saturday night. Everyone was in bed except me. I'm in my pajamas (stretchy black pants and a sweatshirt- amazing how good your memory is when it comes to stuff like this), playing a game on my computer. The dining room light is off, so the only light in the room is coming from my computer screen.

I feel something small and furry at my feet. 'Go away, Rosie, you were just outside.' (Rosie is our beagle puppy.) I brush her away from my feet- but the small furry something doesn't leave. Then it dawns on me. Rosie is in her crate for the night.

Uh oh (more accurately, I think the words that crossed my mind were 'Oh shit').

The small furry something is much, much smaller than a dog. And it was crawling up my pant leg.

I go to use my hand to brush it off... and I realize that I'm feeling tiny claws (btw- it doesn't hurt when a mouse climbs up your leg) and a furry belly with no pant inbetween it and my skin. (Can you say 'another oh shit moment'? I knew you could!) The mouse is INSIDE my pants and almost to my knees!

I don't think that I've ever, ever, EVER flown out of my chair that fast. I jumped up, kicked my leg, and brushed the mouse off with my hands. It goes flying across the room (I can still picture the furry little belly and glimpse of tail that I saw by the light of my computer screen as it flew through the air) and scurries off (I can only assume- I didn't actually see it scurry, but I wasn't able to find a mouse laying around later). I'm screaming, and doing my 'gross, disgusting, ew' dance, hopping around the dining room shivering. My husband (here's where my brave strong man comes in) walks to the doorway to the living room to ask what's wrong.

Let's pause for a second and explain the layout of my house. The rooms are not all that interesting, shape wise- all of them are either squares of rectangles (except for the hallway, which is L shaped). It goes dining room, living room, hallway. I'm in the dining room. He's in the hallway. There's a dark living room between us.

So- he's in the hallway, standing as far as he can possibly get from me and still be able to see me. Now- I'm screaming. You'd think that if your wife is screaming, that you'd come running to make sure that she wasn't hurt of something. My father- who tends to be on the lazy side- even ran to help my mom when she fell through our ceiling (and she wasn't hurt bad!). My husband? Coward. Complete and total coward who had the balls to LAUGH at me when I told him that a mouse just ran up my pant leg. Oh, and he made some off hand remark about spiders (I don't like spiders or anything having to do with spiders, even dusty cobwebs because how do I know that spiders don't reuse webs? Huh?).

So. Recap. Mouse up pant leg, I scream, do my heeby jeeby dance, mouse flying across room, husband laughing at me. My mom bought me some traps, and I would set them out at night (I have three kids and a dog- all of them are very curious, leaving traps out during the day isn't a good idea). I caught the mouse two days later, and then my dance was a triumphant 'I am the mouse catcher! Hear me roar! Woe to any mouse that crawls up my pant leg!' dance. But wait- it gets better.

I spot the trap when I first wake up. There's a mouse in it (dead, of course). I tell Mike that I caught the mouse, and he does a disappearing act. Turns out- he doesn't like dead mice. He hides. I have to actually tell my children to not touch it (I could see their little fingers reaching for the tail and quite frankly, I'd rather not see my two year swinging the mouse around by it's tail, m'kay?) while I go and get my dustpan and broom. The entire time, I'm thinking that I don't like dead things and that I'm glad that I traded my mom one of those plastic pads for under desk chairs for her dustpan (which is the kind that is on a long handle).

I can laugh about this now- but when it happened, it wasn't funny at all.

Kit credits: Hip Cat kit by Jan Crowley, Fonts: Autograph Script and Times New Roman