Clause the Mouse

Mark and I were having breakfast in the sunroom one Saturday morning. (sounds high-falutin' -- doesn't it!?) We were finished eating and were just chatting and relaxing, as we are prone to do on the weekends. As I rocked forward in my recliner to stand up, we both saw this little bitty creature go flying out from under the recliner, to the doorway to the living room, around the corner, streak past the kitchen and under the couch.

A mouse.

a MOUSE!!

Ugh. Now what?

Mark had the idea to blockade the couch and make a cattle chute, I mean, a mouse chute, to the front door. He thought that we could shake the couch and persuade the mouse to come out from under it and right out the front door. Here's a photo:

Guess what?

It didn't work.

I knew that I wasn't going to sleep in our house that night if I thought that a mouse was lurking around. So off to Home Depot we went to get some traps. The friendly little house kind, of course.

We bought four of them and placed them strategically around the house. Mark baited them with peanut butter because everyone knows that mice love peanut butter. Not much more we could do so off we went to Vintage Indiana for the day.

When we got home later that evening we quickly checked the traps -- no mouse. I was disappointed and was already dreading the fact that I probably wouldn't sleep well that night. But because I had lost my diamond, we were quickly out the door again to work on getting it replaced.

Our trip to the jeweler only took about 40 minutes so I wasn't very optimistic that we'd catch a mouse in that time. Afterall, he had the house to himself all day ... you would think with the quietness of the house, he would have smelled that peanut butter and been lured in for a treat!

We came home and checked the traps -- no mouse. So we decided that maybe the mouse had returned to his haven under the recliner. We decided that I would close Mark into the sunroom and shut the doors. He would check under the furniture for the mouse while I stood safely in the living room, cheering him on. But before I could even close the sunroom doors, I heard little tiny scratching noises (just got chills down my spine as I typed that -- yuck!) coming from the trap behind the couch. We obviously didn't look closely enough the first time because Clause the Mouse was in the house!

Mark's relocation program helped the mouse find a new home. And we haven't seen another mouse -- or any evidence of one since. (Now go knock on some wood -- quickly!)

The end.