a tail of a tale

I love my house. I love living in a wooded area. I love the deer that visit our yard on a regular basis. I do not love having mice in our house. Shortly after we moved into our house in September, the Scientist found the stiff body of a little grey mouse in our basement, laying right out in the middle of the floor. No doubt that our cat Roberta was involved, whether she actually killed the creature or found it dead will never be known.

Early Monday morning I woke up to the sounds of Bertie "singing" (for lack of a better term). It was like she was howling at the moon or something. This went on for about 20 mins until the Scientist awoke & actually got up to see what the heck was going on. Not much actually gets me up & out of the bed at 4:30am on a cold night. I heard him talking to her & when he came back in he told me that she had caught a grey mouse & had it on the bed in our guest bedroom, where the Sandlins had laid their heads less than 24 hours before. He reports that he grabbed it by the tail and stared into its open, beady eyes as he carried it to our trash can. He even noted that the cause of death was a bloody wound on its neck.

I had a hard time falling back to sleep. I thought back to a time when I was a wee one & our cat Alvin brought home a tasty treat & left it on the stoop for my Mom to find. I distinctly remember Dad telling her that Alvin had brought Mom a present because he loved her & wanted her to be proud of his kill. Of course, I envisioned Bertie on MY bed with a mouse..I had the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Around 6am, Bertie makes that gutteral sound again--but this time its coming from the floor, right next to the head of my bed. I quickly grabbed my phone and hit a button so to shine a light on my cat. Of course you know what's going to happen, right? There she was, wide eyed like some kind of crazed demon, with a grey mouse hanging out of her mouth.

I'm told I screamed like a banshee, threw the covers off of both me & the Scientist and screamed, "she's got another one!!!!!!" My Knight in Shining Armor jumps up, runs to the doorway to turn the overhead light on and promptly blocks the doorway as I'm trying to get out.

We don't know much but we do know that this mouse had somewhere between 4 and 25 lives. The Scientist immediately checked the garbage can but was unable to produce a corpse. Robo-mouse apparently came alive again in the garbage can & climbed out, only to be caught again by Bertie. While I was in the bathroom with the door closed off & sealed at the bottom with a towel, I was told that the mouse was again, NOT DEAD, and that it had gotten away from Bertie.

So here we are today..I'm a prisoner in my own home with a mouse that is able to reanimate itself & is nowhere to be found. The last time we saw him, he was headed into the laundry room where my clean work clothes are currently residing. Just. Flipping. Great. Every time I saw my cat last night, I was nervous. I even saw some fringe on the kitchen rug this morning & thought it was a mouse tail.

The Scientist bought a couple of live traps last night & filled them with peanut butter, only to have Shelby almost immediately stick her nose in one, set it off, and then carry it around like a giant bone.

The cat is permanently banned from our room until we find the little beast. I plan on drinking a lot of wine & sleeping with every bit of skin under the covers tonight.