Vermin Infestation - Yuck!

"And all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse"...

BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL DEAD AND STUCK IN MOUSE TRAPS.

It's official, I've got mice in the house. And I'm feeling a little bloodthirsty about it.

I was washing the dishes today and I pulled open a seldom-used drawer that is next to the sink to search for a magic eraser sponge.

This is what met my eyes:



The little bastards chewed their way through:

• The insulation that surrounds the dishwasher on the other side of the sink and dragged pieces of it into the drawer
• A plastic Target bag
• Both my waxed fabric and paper icing bags
• A wax birthday candle
• Paper

And left tons of little pellets (any black pellets you see on your screen).

In case you can't see them, here's a shot of the next drawer over and the mess they left on a napkin.

Unlike a horribly embarrassing incident two years ago while Camie was visiting where I thought I had rats in the basement (it ended up being a squirrel and I killed that sucker with a combination of peanut butter/M&M's/rat poison), it's really mice this time. And I feel slightly vindicated.

Last month, the night before I left for Japan, I had been working late each day on little sleep, to make sure I could leave work for two weeks without a guilty conscience. When I got home that night, I still hadn't packed but had to put in another two hours of working time.

So needless to say, I was feeling a bit delirious around midnight when I realized I needed to go to bed and wake up at 4 am to finish packing. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a brown blur race across the kitchen floor. I screamed loudly enough for Andrew to hear from upstairs and he came rushing down. I told him what I thought I saw, he inspected the cabinets where I thought I saw the brown blur go and then he calmed me down enough to go to bed. And I promptly forgot about the incident because I didn't see any other signs of visitors or any more brown blurs.

As I was telling Andrew about the mice tonight, I told him to admit it, he thought I had been hallucinating that night when I told him about the brown blur. He admitted it readily but pointed out that I told him that it was a bird that had hopped across the floor. In my defense, I was tired, it was a brown blur and I thought it moved too quickly to be a mouse.

But the most important thing you need to take away from this story is that I was right about seeing something move across the kitchen floor. And now I need to find a way to annihilate it and all its friends. Before they find the lazy Susan filled with all my snacks and baking supplies.