The Intruder

Yes, that’s right! We had an intruder that rudely disrupted our lives for 2 nights now and one day as I was home all day Friday with 2 little ones fearful of what he might do. This is no 2- legged intruder, however. I have come to know that he is one talented and annoying little MOUSE! I thought perhaps it was a rat instead of a mouse, but have come to realize he was just a field mouse. I’ll just say that this mouse has led to us having 3 ½ hours of sleep Thursday night and about 5 hours of sleep last night. He was discovered about 1:15am on Thursday night as he was gnawing away at the door in Jason’s closet. At first Jason didn’t even believe what I was telling him. He kept on for a while insisting that I was hallucinating. I must tell the whole story for you all to appreciate how talented I say this mouse is.
Upon my insistence after crying, breathing hysterically, and generally very fearful, Jason turns the light on and we go on the hunt that would scare the bejebeerze out of me. We listen quietly….suspect his closet is where the noise is coming from…open the closet door….mouse jumps from the right side clear over to the left side!! Jason never saw it….I DID!! Keeps saying, “Are you sure you saw a mouse? I don’t believe you.” We’re both hot…why is it 76 in the house when we keep it on 71 at night? Is it just my nerves?? No, Jason is hot too. Something is not right with the AC….Jason goes to check it….clicks it on/off/on/off until it starts shooting out cooler air. It did this one night last week too. While he’s in the hall checking out the AC, this suspecting mouse decides it’s time to peek around the corner from inside the closet and see if he can sneak out. I scream, jump up to sit on the sink and raise my feet…..mouse runs to hide inside closet once again. Jason runs back in the bedroom and once again thinks I may be delusional. I insist there is a mouse in his closet!! We shut the door to the closet (there is carpet in part of our bathroom and his closet making it impossible for this mouse to sneak out under the door! Praise the Lord for this!! Saved us) and debate what to do. So I insist Jason needs to get out his clothes for Friday and KEEP THE DOOR SHUT so he doesn’t escape in the morning when he goes to get a shower. He does as I ask and we head back to bed to sleep. About 15 min. later, the mouse begins to gnaw at the door in an effort to break out. This is LOUD and I ask Jason, “So tell me you don’t hear THAT!?” He agrees and we think, well now what are we going to do? It’s 2:00 in the morning and no way to kill the mouse.

I find a mouse trap under the kitchen sink from when we used to rent at Juanita’s and we set it with an oh so small smidgen of cheese. We wait….we wait…nothing but MORE GNAWING on the door. We open the door and see that the cheese is gone and the trap is still set. LITTLE BOOGER! So now we think what to do…try again! This time with a little bigger piece of cheese. Well, he absconds with it as well without setting off the trap and begins to gnaw once again…this time it’s only 3am! At 3:20 we set the trap once more over by the place he’s gnawing so he HAS to step on the lever to get to the door he loves so much. Wait 15 more min. and hear more gnawing. Open door to find he’s moved the trap out of the way without setting it off. So now we set it one last time as we smear the cheese on the lever so he has to push harder to get the cheese licked off the lever. This does not work!! More gnawing…Jason heads to the couch at 3:40 and I hear the baby and begin warming the breast milk so he won’t wake Emma Grace up. I feed baby and pump more milk…now it’s 4:20am. Mouse is still upset and gnawing away, so I head to couch. Can’t sleep out there and Jase is still tossing and turning at 5:00am. Jason’s alarm goes off at 6:00am and get gets up to get a shower. Jason leaves for work at 6:45 and I hear the baby again at nearly 7am. There is no sleep for the weary!! Baby is up for good; why he’s had a wonderful night’s sleep! BAHH!!!

So I head to the closet to see what our little booger mouse has made of the closet….I find he has somehow managed to set off the snapping trap with a Clemson flip-flop and now made off once again with the smeared cheese. How smart is this rodent? There are also bits of the carpet now pulled up. I load up the children and head to Wal-mart to get a cube trap. We return speedily, set the cracker with peanut butter in the end of the cube and wait an hour and a half. I check the cube and he has managed to pull the cracker half-way out of the trap door without himself getting trapped inside. What in the world?!? How big IS this thing? He didn’t appear all that big when he jumped out at me. I reassemble the cracker and position the cube near the gnawed part of the door and hope he’ll go inside further to get a smaller piece. By Friday evening when Jason came home from work and my dad drove up from Charleston, he still was wreaking havoc on the closet. BEDTIME>>>>no mouse gotten yet. I cannot LIVE ONE MORE NIGHT like we had the previous night. We take our chances and hope that with both the snap trap and the cube he’ll be caught somehow. 2am comes and the little mouse begins his usual gnawing to try to escape just as he had the night before.

Jason goes to couch…I do too but cannot get comfortable and baby needs passy at 2am, 2:30am, and now both dad in the pool table room asleep and hubby beside me on other side of sectional are SNORING. Help Lord!!! I head to baby’s room to sleep on the twin bed in the nursery. Baby’s making too much noise and then needs feeding at 3:30am. I feed him, pump milk again, and head back in our bedroom at 4:20 to hopefully get some rest without any gnawing sounds. At 5am when I am nearly asleep I start to hear the noise again. No, Lord, you KNOW I need some rest. I think of things I can put up against the door so he cannot gnaw anymore. At 5:40 I get up and check out what kind of disarray the closet and clothes are in….I swing open the door and still hear the scratching…..COULD IT BE?!!!! The mouse is in the cube up on the dresser inside the closet and HE CAN’T GET OUT!!! PTL!!!! Wonder how long he was in that cube scratching? I take the cube outside on the front porch and notify Jason that the INTRUDER HAS been CAUGHT!!! CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES<>

We both head back into the bedroom for a couple more hours of sleep….oh wait…we have a 3 month old who wakes up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:30am begging to be fed AGAIN. I get up so upset that Jason has had good sleep since 2am and I am about to fall over from sleepiness and kill our son. He must have sensed my anger and came in at 6:45 to help finish feeding the baby and let me get some rest. I slept until 9am!!!!! Thank you, Jason, for taking the baby and Emma Grace once she was up at 7:30am. What a blessing my husband gave me Sat. morning and what a blessing God gave us in catching the mouse. Yes, it was a mouse, not a rat. Although all signs would have pointed to one much bigger and smarter. Guess he just got too hungry and couldn’t resist that peanut butter cracker anymore. Hope we never have another intruder of that description!!! Maybe soon I will catch up on the sleep I so desperately need.