Animal Friends

Warning:  This post is not for the weak of heart.

Andy and I have at times had animal friends around our house.  These friends are not invited like our dog, Allie or the fish, Princess, Jerry, and Sissy.  Instead these are friends that show up and cause chaos and traps to be set.  We've had rats, mice, opossum with her baby, a snake, ants (previous post on ants), and geckos.  Andy has had fun, anger, triumph, and frustration in dealing with these animals.  He unsuccessfully hunted a rat with a BB gun.  He beat a rat to death with a baseball bat.  He's set loads of rat traps.  He's set out rat poison.  He and I listened and watched while a momma opossum called her baby, put the baby on her back, and then walked away.  I had to get a small, brown snake out of the house while pregnant with Sophia.  Needless to say, I was optimistic that interactions with these types of creatures would not follow us to Dubai.  Everything was fine until a few months ago.

One day while waiting on Andy so we could leave for a date, the first mouse decided to make his appearance.  The mouse ran into the house.  First, I almost hyperventilated.  Then Andy told me to calm down and help him.  Okay.  After several minutes of me jumping from couch to chair and back again, telling Andy where the mouse went, and Andy using a level to poke the little creature out of the house, it did finally run outside through the open front door.  Well what happened not even five minutes later?  That same mouse came inside again!  Same procedure as before.  We shut a bedroom and bathroom door, opened the front door, and my job is to watch the mouse.  After hitting his head on the front door (which was funny), this mouse finally runs back outside the same way he came in.  Through a hole under the sliding glass door.  Andy gets another level and places it in the track of the door and shoves washcloths on either side of the level.  This is our mouse prevention, and it has and is still working. 

How else can a mouse come into the house if our mouse prevention is working?  Well let me answer that for you.  The 3 children that live in my house have a habit of leaving doors open for an extended period of time which in turn invites mice into our house.  On 2 separate occasions a mouse (the same one?) came in through the open back door and Andy and I used our same technique to get the rodent outside.  Nothing spectacular happened these times because we are experts at rodent removal!  Something interesting did happen while we were loading up to come home for Christmas. 

We left the front door open to load up our 5 large suitcases, 5 trunks, and 5 carry on bags.  Unbeknownst to us, a little mouse friend came inside.  We locked up the house and left for our trip.  Two days after we arrived home, Andy abruptly gets up from his chair and chuckles.  He then shuts a bedroom and bathroom door, opens the front door, and says, "Christi, I need your help."  It didn't take but a second to understand that he saw a mouse.  This brown, small creature runs behind a cabinet in the entry way every time he comes inside.  That's where he ran this time, too.  Sophie and I were on the watch for where the mouse would run once Andy started poking at it what the level.  But the interesting thing about this mouse is that he died within a couple minutes of Andy seeing it run behind the cabinet and scratching its back.  Turns out the scratching was really twitching because Andy accidentally squished it while moving the cabinet.  He was then in mouse clean up mode.  He bagged up the rodent and its 2 week mess behind the cabinet.  I was happy that this instance ended quickly, and that I didn't have to be the one calling the play by play for the mouse's whereabouts.  They are fast creatures that can get away from your eyesight quickly.

I'm hoping that this was the same mouse that came in every time.  Positive thinking, right?  If that's the case, then maybe we are now free of animal friends for awhile.  While we were waiting to pick up our food from Pappadeaux's during the wait for our 6 hour delayed flight to come back to Dubai, Boston started talking to a lady about the rats that we had at our previous house.  Now mind you, this is before we got home and had the last run in with the mouse.  Andy tried getting him to be quiet, but there was no stopping him.  He just kept talking and talking.  She laughed, I laughed, and Andy even had a chuckle or two.