"Head...Shoulders...Knees and...SOCKS!"

Well the mouse is back.  Yucko. 

Earlier this year we discovered a little visitor in our bedroom.  I was laying in bed reading a book, Av was asleep in his room across the hall and Shiny was downstairs working in the basement.  I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and I looked over to the dresser.  I expected to see nothing - that it was a blob or glare on my glasses - but no.  I see this tiny little face staring at me over Shiny's sweat socks.  He looked at me.  I looked at him.  And then I ran downstairs trying so hard not to scream and wake up the kid.  When I went back upstairs, he was nowhere in sight.  Ownie cat had wandered up and was sniffing around the TV stand.  But the little bugger reappeared on top of the sock pile, then ran along the windowsill behind the back of the dresser, then disapeared again.  Cat never found him.  We moved the dresser and everything along that wall and never found him.  We moved on.

Then the other morning, I'm getting ready for work.  The boy is happily sitting in my bed watching the Muppet Show.  I had bought some killer shoes the day before, and was picking up the empty shoe box to put it away, when a little furry mouse jumps out of the box, on to my arm, off my arm back onto the floor, and runs all the way around the foot of the bed and across the room before diving under the TV stand.  I screamed out of shock - scaring the boy.  He did not see the mouse, but thinks it's funny that I was scared and that it jumped on me.  He looks under the TV stand, but doesn't see the critter.  I bemoan the fact that our nearly blind cat wasn't upstairs (not that she'd be of much help - but still) and then go scrub my arm.

Av decides that when we get home that evening, he will help me find and catch the mouse.  He then asks me if he ever told me about the time he caught a mouse in his bathroom.  This was news to me.  He then tells a very elaborate story about how he caught a mouse in his bathtub, put it in his toilet, peed on it, and then flushed it down.  Of course.  (I was now a bit concerned about my kid, but whatever - I assume he washed his hands after).  Then when we got downstairs and found the cat, Av wagged his finger at her and told her to go upstairs and get the mouse.  He also reassured me that he would find it when we got home and smash it on the head with a fork.  (Again, concerned about the boy...). 

We have not seen the mouse again (yet).  This weekend we will try to set up a trap to catch that little sucker.  Twice we've found mice in our basement (one dead, the other alive, caught, and thrown outside), but up two flights of stairs from that - in our room!  Yucko.  I'd worry if we caught him alive and threw him outside, that he'd just come right back in to our house.  The thought of killing the mouse seems like bad karma to me, but I'm not going to put it in my car, drive 5 miles, and dispose of it elsewhere.

Certainly makes that fox I saw out in front of our home a couple months ago seem a lot more appealing...