Not a Creature Was Stirring Except the Mouse in our House

Oh my God we have a mouse.  I can HEAR it.  I could hear it last night, and it was driving me nuts because I couldn't find it.  I can hear the little scratching sound coming from what sounds like my cabinet next to the refrigerator.  But it's not there!  I have taken a flashlight to the cabinet, under the fridge, in the crack between the fridge and the cabinet.  I have removed the drawer above the cabinet to see it.  I continue to hear the scratching, but I can't figure out where the damn thing is!  I put out traps last night, and there's nothing there this morning.  But I can still hear it off and on.  AUGH!  Nothing like a mouse to make you feel like your home is filthy and creepy.  And it makes me feel like there's hundreds of them filling my walls.

So I'm going insane.  I feel like it's in there, probably with it's significant other, making hundreds of babies in my walls.  There's this weird show on one of the cable channels that I got stuck watching once called "Infested."  One of them was about this mouse infestation in Australia.  I can't get it out of my head now.  If you're curious, check out a clip here.  Hideous!  So this may just get me to do the kitchen cabinet project I've been putting off.  For 13 years.  Maybe.

This isn't the first time we've had mice.  For living on a farm, the little invaders are surprisingly rare.  And in the past when we've found out there's a mouse, we just flood the place with traps.  We'll catch one or two, and then it's over.  But the traps stay out a couple weeks to make sure.  This seriously has only happened a few times over the 13 years we've lived here.  But it's so disgusting.  It makes me feel all twitchy and jittery, and like I don't want to be here.

SIL2 has a debilitating fear of mice.  She has good reason for it, though--she's lived in a couple places with mouse issues, and it traumatized her.  She has a rodent problem in general.  She's terrified of squirrels because one time she was living in this old house and there was a squirrel that had got into the house somehow, and it ended up running across her feet in her bed!  You might want to go back and read that sentence again.  Seriously, how crazy would that be?

Years ago, I think it was before we had kids, hubby and I were upstairs in bed and I felt like there was movement in our room.  In the dark I saw a shadow.  Freaky!  We turned on the light and discovered there was a bat.  In our bedroom!  Upstairs!  ohmygodohmygodohmygod.  He ended up somehow chasing it down the stairs with a broom and we got it out of the house, but you can imagine what a chaotic scene that was.  Me hiding under my covers most of the time, and him running around in his boxers swinging at a bat.  Sheesh.  I'm all for wildlife, I just want it to stay wild.  Not living in my house with me.  But that was the worst of it.  Now it's just the very occasional mouse, and hopefully the bats are done checking out our house.

But it does make you feel like you live in filth.  Even if the house is relatively clean.  Why do they pick my house?  Do mice and bats ever go in the perfect new houses in those colorful new gingerbread house developments?  I hope so.  As bitchy as that sounds, I do.  Man, I keep taking breaks from typing this to scratch the invisible creepies I feel all over me.  EW!

So that's it for inside the house.  Have I mentioned that we think we have a Wolverine living outside?  Believe me, it may seem nuts, but we think we do.  It's a long story for another day.  But right now I'm just hoping that it doesn't decide to come in and live with us, the mice, the bats, and hopefully our future dog.  What kind of place is this???  And the creepy millipedes and earwig things that we find!  Oh, and DO NOT get me started on the damn asian lady beetles.  Whoever introduced that particular pest should be locked up in prison.  I have a vacuum cleaner dedicated solely to ladybug removal.

So who wants to come over and hang out at our house now?  I'm surprised I have friends.