Eeeeeewwwwwwww! Part Deux

Wow, what are the chances that I sit down to write this post and I'm going to talk about the same thing I talked about in my last post --exactly a month ago? Hopefully, I'll have something else to talk about next month.

I didn't go to work yesterday because I wasn't feeling well. I had a cough. Yeah, I know--wah. I'm usually not that wimpy, but hear me out.

I had gone to bed late the night before, and then had trouble falling asleep because of all the coughing. I got up about 2am and did what I knew I shouldn't. I took some NyQuil. I love that stuff. I had planned on only taking a 1/2 dose or so, because it was already so late, but it was the end of the bottle, so I just drank it all down. Hmmm...that makes it sound like I was standing in my kitchen drinking straight from the bottle. Not so, I drank from the little cup thing.

After that, I slept like a dead person. So much so, that I got up too late to shower before I took Alex to school early for band practice. So when I got back from school, I laid down for "just a minute" before I got into the shower. A little bit later, Jason asked, "are you going to work?" "Yeah," I said, and had every intention of doing so. When I woke up at 9:30, I figured it was probably time to call in to work. Not gonna make it after all.

I fell asleep again, and must have slept until noon or so, when I got up and had a bowl of Colossal Crunch, the poor man's version of Cap'n Crunch. As soon as I was finished, I went back up to bed and slept until about 4:30 or so. And I only woke up then because Alex came in and said, "Mom, wake up. Dad needs you downstairs." My first thought was, "What the hell does he need that is so important that they woke me up when I'm not feeling well?" Then Alex informed me that the reason I was needed was that there was a mouse in his bedroom. "Inside your bedroom?" I wanted to clarify that this one was not outside in his window well. Yep, it was in his bedroom.

When I got down there, Jason had it cornered in an area where it was able to hide under a bunch of crap that Alex had laying around his bedroom. He was using a long, narrow cardboard box to move stuff around, and had a Lego box standing on its side, hoping that the mouse would run into it, and all would be well. I could see that that was not going to happen.

We have friends who have had a couple of mice in their house in the last month or two, and they used a plastic Tupperware-like container to trap it. I ran upstairs to get a disposable plastic bowl, hoping I could trap it under there. Jason didn't seem like he thought it would work, but I thought it was better than hoping that the stupid thing would run into a very narrow box.

I got down on my hands and knees in the area where we thought it was, and I moved the papers that Jason said it was hiding under. Yep, there it was! EEEEEEWWWWWWWW!!! The tough part at this point was that it was right up against the flat base of a coat rack, so when I tried to bring the plastic container down on top of the mouse, I couldn't actually trap him, because I couldn't get the container down flat on the carpet--I kept hitting the base of the coat rack.

So the mouse is running around in this area, and finally goes and hides under the bookcase nearby. Jason said he'd move the bookcase, as it's a pretty small one, but he'd have to be quick about it because I figure that at soon as the mouse's cover is gone, he's gonna bolt. He didn't even get the bookcase off the floor and the mouse ran out into as much of an open area as there is in Alex's room. Somewhere in the midst of taking the Lord's name in vain numerous times as well as using the "S-word," I managed to trap the little bastard under the little plastic container. Whew, the adrenaline was a'flowin'!

But the story doesn't end here. Oh no. I slipped a piece of cardboard under the container and flipped it over and put the lid on it. "Now what?" I asked Jason. He said we should just throw the whole thing in the garbage, because the next day was garbage day and we could just be rid of the whole thing. Alex said we should bring it to the park and release it like we did with the live mouse we found in his window well this summer. I told him that we weren't going to do that, it's no big deal to just throw it away. He started to cry.

"Fine. I'll take him there myself. I'll walk to the park," he said.

"Jason, will you take him to the park so he can let the damn thing go?" I asked. He just kind of rolled his eyes, but he didn't say no, so I told Alex that Dad would drive him to the park so he could do the humane thing and release him. Such a softie, but that's why we love him.

I've never found a live mouse in my house before. Let me tell ya, it was creepy. I was just so glad to have caught it. I don't think I could stand it if I knew it was running around the house somewhere.

But now the big question is: Is it better to find and catch a live mouse in your house, or to have the stench of a dead mouse in your house?