not a creature was stirring...

EXCEPT FOR the mouse!!! Except for, not even... same diff.

So here's our saga: We saw a mouse or three over time, caught a few on glue traps, cleaned up mouse poop in a place or two throughout the months, thought they were finally gone...

Yeah... right.

Now this part is a testament to how little I've been cooking up real meals in our house this super hot summer: they had taken over the pantry and had chewed into cardboard boxes of mixes, flour, crackers, cereal, plastic bags of flour, sugar, chocolate chips, styrofoam cups of ramen lunches (they licked those babies clean!).... All without my knowledge. Well, we saw a trace here or there, thought they were gone, were frankly afraid to look too closely... I mean, who wants to actually dig in there and deal with the after effects of a mouse party? An obvious thing to keep putting off...

I spent all afternoon yesterday throwing away 3/4 of our food and paper supplies, taking shelves out of the shelving system (to be thrown away, thank you very much. Plywood with poop and pee on it? For my food? So not happening. How would you ever get it clean??) , shop-vac-ing the poop and the cardboard/styrofoam/paper bits, 409-ing the walls, the shelf supports, the floor.

And what do we find today? Another friggin mouse! The pantry (aka the front-coat-closet-turned-pantry) still smelled bad, so I opened up the door to air it out and a dang mouse ran straight down the vertical metal part of the shelves! What the crap is left in there for him to eat??? NOTHING! Go home, little annoying disease-carrying make-me-want-to-puke animal! Eat some of that fine bright green mouse, er, food in the little plastic box there, and then go share it with your friends! See ya! "Humane" disposal time is OVER!

This is so not my idea of a well-spent weekend afternoon. Or week, for that matter. Now I get to have new wood cut for our shelves, finish airing out the closet, make sure the stupid mice actually stay out this time (how??), and shop for new food for my family.

Reminds me of the time I thought squirrels were cute... until one got into my dorm room. The thought still makes me shiver to this day!