I am a City Girl, part I

Warning: even though this is just part I, this is a long post.

I do not try to hide the fact that I am a city girl, through and through. It’s no secret that I would hate living on a farm or that I want to move to town. Recently, on our girls’ trip to Ikea, I panicked just a little bit about having a tarp from a horse barn in my van…fearing that when we came back to the van after shopping in Ikea my van would stink like, well, like a horse barn. Then I got teased even further for accusing Lea of a frog being stuck inside her tarp after hearing a frog croaking over and over. It seemed strange that it was sort of rhythmic, but who would have guessed that Dee chose a croaking frog for a ring tone on her cell phone? Okay, so I should have guessed it was *Dee’s* phone, but it really sounded real. And I know what frog croaking sounds like because I LIVE IN THE COUNTRY!

Now I love my neighbors, but I am tired of living out here. There are many reasons. I would gain so much time every day if I weren’t driving back and forth to town. We could walk and ride bike to places like church, the library, grandma & grandpa’s house, friends’ houses, etc. Plus, things don’t happen in town like what happened here yEsTeRdAy. (I know this, because I have lived in town for all but about 5 years of my life and it has never happened to me before. Except when camping. But that’s a whole ‘nother post). Yesterday…

It was a gorgeous day. The girls were playing outside. Like the whole day. It was awesome. I had windows open in the house. Suddenly, I hear this “Eeww, eeww, eeww! Mom, you GOTTA see this.” Okay, I’m pretty sure I *don’t* have to see whatever it is that is “Eeww”, but some child came in and drug me outside to show me

A dead mouse.

On my lawn.

Next to a big pile of dog poop.

Can I just say? Tie up your dogs, people!

Back to the dead mouse. Interesting for him just to die there on my lawn. I’ve seen plenty of partial mice carcasses, thanks to the many cats that also roam my neighborhood. (Can I just say? Cats should be indoor animals). We also once had a mouse in our garbage can during a tremendous Nor’easter storm. We blamed that on the cold, brought the garbage can to the street, and said good-bye. But now why was this dumb mouse on my lawn, dead?

I took the kids inside and made Ed clean up both the mouse and the pile when he got home. All is well.

Or so I thought.

Ed and I were calmly watching TV and eating a snack. Out of the corner of my eye I spy movement. Yep. You guessed it. A little mouse running across the carpet of my family room, in front of the fireplace. I screamed just a little bit. Ed thought I must have seen the largest spider in the world the way I screamed. So, the mouse kept darting back and forth and Ed saw it and then it kind of disappeared behind a basket next to the fireplace. I instructed Ed to go get the wire strainer with a handle to try to catch the mouse. Doesn’t that seem like a good idea? I thought so.

So Ed goes over to the basket. No mouse. He’s gone. It seems he snuck into the gas fireplace. Well, great, I think. Just turn on the fireplace and he’s toast. But NOoooooo. Ed’s got to turn OFF the pilot light. He gets a flashlight and looks in there. No mouse. But there are two little holes, leading from the fireplace to…who knows where? Is this how the mouse got in? No idea, but that’s where he is.

Now what? We don’t have a trap. It’s 10:00 at night. So, my genius husband decides to duct tape the holes so the mouse can’t get back in the house. Great. We go to bed.

I finally fall asleep. Then I start dreaming. And I’m dreaming about one of my kids knocking at the door. Over and over and over. And then they’re not knocking. They’re scratching. Scritch, scratch, scritch. Over and over. Then I wake up and realize…it’s not my kids…it’s the mouse. In the wall. Trying to scratch or chew his way out. I nudge Ed. It’s the mouse, I say. He says, I know.

WHAT? I KNOW??? And you’re just lying there?

We lay there listening to the stupid mouse in our wall for about 45 minutes. Ed finally gets up. I do not know what his plan is. I hear him looking in the fireplace. Then I hear R-r-i-i-p! Twice. He ripped off the duct tape. At that moment, the mouse stopped scratching and making noise. Just silence. So. I go to the family room. I ask Ed what his plan is. He doesn’t know. He’s just sitting there. Waiting for the mouse. He has nothing with which to catch the mouse if it does come out. He’s just waiting.

So I get on the computer and read some blogs. What else would a supportive wife do while her husband is waiting for a mouse to come out of a fireplace? I say, “Do you want me to google ‘how to get a mouse out of a fireplace and catch him without a trap?’ Ed doesn’t think that’s funny. I think it’s hysterical. All I can think is, this is gonna be a great blog post.

I suggest to Ed that he tape the holes back up and we sleep in the office so that we don’t hear the mouse. He has a better idea. Oh yes. This is genius. He tapes the holes back up, except for one of them he leaves just a tiny bit open, in case the mouse wants to come out that way. So that the mouse will stop scratching and eating the inside of our walls. THEN, he takes a bunch of pieces of duct tape and puts them sticky-side-up just on this side of the hole. Yep. He’s gonna catch that mouse on duct tape. I was seriously giggling. Oh my word. If only that had worked.

So we went to bed. We didn’t hear the mouse again. I fell asleep formulating my blog post in my mind and consequently had some pretty bizarre dreams about catching mice. Trust me, you don’t want to know. But Ed claims to have woken me up from one of my dreams because I sounded scared. It’s true. I was screaming in my dream. Ed said I didn’t scream out loud, though. Whew.

So this morning, we go check the duct-tape-trap. Nothing. No evidence of a mouse anywhere else in the house. So. Either he got out without getting stuck on the duct tape and is in my house somewhere, or he’s dead inside my wall, or he found another way out to the outside and is happily back with his family. Unless that was his dead mother on my lawn. Then he’s probably sad.

Today I must go buy a trap and try to set it. When I told the girls about the whole episode this morning, Elise said, “Mom, you woke me up when you screamed.” That is true. Bethany said, “Why would you scream over a little mouse?” Who gave birth to THAT child, anyway? and Becca said, “When you catch him in the trap, what are you going to do with him?” And of course she’s assuming that mouse is going to be ALIVE in the trap. Please do me a favor. Don’t tell her otherwise.

To be continued…