The Mouse, he left our house

"The Mouse, he left our house.
No Mouse today, he's gone away.
To ease the pain, he's down the drain!"

Well, ok, he's not. And btw, if you can identify the above quote, I'll give you free dead mice in the mail.

Anyway, I'm sick. I caught the flu. It moved from my throat to my sinuses to my bronchial tubes. I did the fever thing. Now I'm doing the bronchial cough/exhaustion thing.

And my husband is sick. Because it wasn't enough for it to go through my body, it had to leap to his body too.

I stayed home from work this week. My husband had to fly up north and work, and sleep in a hotel room every night. :P He realized he had it about midway in his first workday up north. He's now home, after 5 hellish days for him, and very happily glued to the couch.

We have 2 big German Shepherds. Do they scare rodents away? Hell no. Do they care if we have a rodent? Not even. Do they help with killing rodents? Nope.

They have a strong prey drive. But nothing of that came out to help in this instance.

So this past Wednesday, I'm home sick, right? Coughing up a lung. And I open the doors to the cabinets to find something to eat. Hoping there's some soup I didn't realize was down there. Oooh. Look at all the little poo-like objects down there. Uh-huh.

I pulled out 2 mouse traps, and set them both. This was a major challenge for me because mouse traps scare me. Well, loud sudden noises scare me. It took me a while to get used to gunfire when my Dad taught me how to fire a gun. Little kids running around with balloons is like torture, because I know eventually they are going to pop something.

But I was sick. And something about feeling like crap made setting traps not a big deal. Just bloody had to be done.

I dropped one on the floor to hear it snap, to desensitize me. Then I proceeded to mess up and snap it on my fingers. Twice. Well, I was pretty damned well desensitized by it by then, LOL! I placed two traps Wednesday afternoon, and by Wednesday evening, we have the following:



And my first response, instead of "what a filthy, disgusting, disease ridden creature", was "oh, that poor cute little thing... and it's in pain..." Yeah, I know. I've lost it. But take another look:



So I've got this mouse. And it's still alive. And suffering. *sigh* I take pics of it, and send them to my husband. We talk over the phone. He tells me I can clock it with a shovel. Uh-huh.

I gave in and put it in a ziplock plastic baggy. I picked it up with the plastic baggy turned inside out to use as a fingerless glove. Works great. Thanks to all the lessons from picking up dog poop. ;)

Here's another picture of the cute poor little mouse:



So I picked up Mr. Mouse, and put him (or her?) on the kitchen floor, inside the plastic baggy. And then I beaned it with the handle of my husband's foot-long black flashlight.

Yes. This mouse. Down here. Beaned it. No pics of the beaning, though. Sorry. I'm not quite that twisted.



So I've been washing dishes (and coughing up a lung) ever since. The cleaned pots and pans (that the mouse ran over and in many cases, poo'd in) are all piled up on the kitchen table. Most of them... not quite done. Moving kinda slow while coughing up a lung.

Once the dishes are fully removed, I can nuke the kitchen cabinets. 'Er, I mean clean them with lysol, pinesol, or clorox. Not sure which to use. Maybe all 3.

Wish me luck.