Saturday, April 3, 2010

The Final Tail of Mickey and Miss Mouse-elline

Well, if you read the first installment of our "tail" here, you'll recall that when we left you, Sam-I-Am was doing his level best to capture Mickey - the- mouse (not to be confused with his more famous cousin) in my closet. I did not get up to help Sam or Mickey. I'd decided that my interference at 4:00 a.m. wouldn't be welcome. At this point, however, I must confess to being quite relieved to find no mouse parts anywhere when I awoke.

With the drama of the day, I quickly forgot about Mickey and moved on to other things until Charming discovered a mouse in his bathroom (aka the guest bathroom). Ack! How did that rascally Mickey end up down the stairs? And if Mickey was in the guest bathroom, just who was Sam looking for in the refrigerator (yes, again!)? With little fuss, Charming and Buttercup caught Mickey in a dog biscuit box (hey, we're high tech here and we have big dogs, thus, a big dog biscuit box can double as a snazzy mouse mobile home). Buttercup took Mickey down the street to the bushes near the mailbox and helped Mickey move. (Apparently, the bushes down by the mailboxes are warm bushes - who knew?) Sam was foiled, Buttercup was relieved, Charming could use the restroom with privacy, and all was right with the world.

Our "tail" ends there, right? Wrong. Fast forward 24 hours and Sam is making us crazy staring at the refrigerator. He hadn't stopped Seriously. I moved the refrigerator completely out from the wall, vacuumed under it (yes, there was a clump of dog fur behind it--let's be real here, it is the refrigerator!) and there was nothing there! Sam wouldn't move, however, so I knew something was somewhere.10:30 p.m. - Charming has gone to bed in the trailer and our day is winding down. Valiant hears a thump-bump upstairs and jokes to Buttercup, "You'd better run, I'll bet Sam has a mouse." Buttercup runs and screams...the joke was on Valiant...Sam did have a mouse! So, even as I'm praising him for bringing me his "kill" that he's dropped on the floor in the laundry room, I notice the "dead" mouse's ear twitch! I scoop up Sam just in time to watch "Miss Mouse-elline" (Mickey's significant other) race into the guest bathroom (again with the guest bathroom!). Sam gets locked in the family room with me, the dog biscuit box gets recruited again, Buttercup gets to work (after drying her tears) and "Miss Mouse-elline" (get it? Miss Mouse-elline/Miss Maybelline) is captured 20 - 30 minutes later (she didn't give in easily!). Mind you, it is close to 11:30 p.m. by the time the mouse is in the dog biscuit box. Buttercup informs me that she has to take Miss Mouse-elline to be with Mickey down at the warm bush. Um, seriously? She was intractable...the mouse had to go be with the other mouse. Valiant was drafted to head down the street with his sister and the mouse was dumped into the warm bush. (I heard that Miss Mouse-elline didn't want to give up the dog biscuit box, but Buttercup was firm.) I don't think there are any other members of the family lurking about, 'cause Sam doesn't seem to find any of our appliances worthy of interest and is back to guarding the bed all day long.

And that, my friends, is the end of this "tail". What? You thought I'd leave you with an unhappy ending? Oh, please...we don't roll that way at our house!

Oh, and to the people who live by the "warm bush", we hope you like mice. They were quite behaved at our house and we hope you'll be happy with each other.

A few important discussion points:

Did you notice that nowhere was I involved with the actually capture and release of the mice? You noticed that and wondered about it? Oh, please...why else did I have children if not to take care of strange animals in my home?

Did you notice that I did not care where the mice were released, as long as it was far from my house? Yes, I know...I'm a terrible person, but I just didn't have it in me to find "good" places to release the mice and I figured a "warm bush" was just right!

Finally, did you notice that I didn't bother to get up in the middle of the night to find Mickey, even though I heard a rumble issuing from my closet? I looked at it this way: If the cat couldn't find the mouse, what made me think that my finally honed middle of the night senses would be better? Good thinking, right? Yeah, I thought so, too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, I am just saying that if you feel something warm against your leg in the middle of the night, it won't be my toe LOL like it was when Hubby jumped up in the middle of the night after "hearing them" when we had mice. He would say "I hear them" in his sleep when they would play around our bed. One night he got more than he bargained for when my big toe graced his thigh. LOL Just hearing the words "I hear them" sends me into the giggles.

Glad they have "moved on". Sam sounds like he had things fully under control. Our cat would stare at the stove like that, even weeks after they came in, convinced they were still there. Nothing could convince him that they'd moved beyond the stove. Not even them setting up house in his food dish.