Mouse in the House!

Imagine it's 4:30 in the morning and you feel a tickle on your leg. The tickle moves upward and seconds later you feel that same tickle run down your arm. The first sensation groggily has you wondering , "What's that?" and you reach down to brush it away. The second one has you sitting bolt upright in bed declaring, "That felt like a mouse!"

I had thrown back my covers when I got up to make a trip to the bathroom shortly before all this happened.  I figure a mouse climbed the bed-skirt and landed in the warm spot I had just abandoned. When I came back and covered myself up, I covered him up too. I never turn the lights on when I get up in the night so I didn't see him. I chalked the whole thing up to my imagination and went back to sleep. We don't get mice in the house. We've had the occasional one in the basement, but they have never been up running around my house in the 41 years I've lived here.

While reading in bed around 6 AM I saw a good sized mouse wander out from under the bed. He sauntered to the foot of the bed and I followed him, calling out to my hubby, "There's a mouse in the house." I followed him out of the room. He didn't seem to be in any hurry and I was just trying to keep track of him so we could corner him somewhere. But when he left my room he vanished very quickly.

I set about securing any food products he might decide to sample while my hubby set up some traps around the house.

All day I watched for movement out of the corner of my eye. Nothing. That night, within half an hour of taking a leisurely bath I hear my hubby calling, "He's in the bathroom."

Hubby had been doing his exercises in the kitchen when he looked up and discovered he had an audience.The mouse was sitting there watching him. Once noticed he decided to wader off to the bathroom where he hid behind the door. This mouse was in no way skiddish as twice in one day he had revealed himself to us in brightly lit rooms and then just casually wandered off.  Going into the bathroom was a major mistake though. We shut the door.

I suggested hubby fetch a box or a bucket to catch him in. He came back with a box so small it would never serve the purpose. But he also came back with a stick. At this point I must inform you that my husband is a self defence expert and sticks of varying shapes and sizes are his weapon of choice. He went into the bathroom and shut the door.

Now this is when I remembered stories about my paternal grandmother doing the same thing, but with a rat. She lived in a third floor apartment on the corner of Gilmour and Kent in Ottawa. There was a garbage shoot in the bathroom so she didn't have to carry trash all the way down to the bins in the back alley. The rat must have come up through he shoot. My grandmother decided to take care of the problem and shut herself in the bathroom with it with nothing but a broom. This is a very dangerous thing to do with a rat!

Neither my mouse nor my grandmother's rat survived these mighty warriors and their chosen sticks. The stick used here , by the way, was a yard stick frequently used by me with a folded paper towel held on the end with an elastic band. I use it to eliminate spiders. Apparently it works well for mice too, if handled by the right person. The little box ended up being useful after all, for disposing of the body. My spider killer will now be renamed as simply the killing stick and I know I can feel secure, once again, in my bed at night.