A mouse story. Wally style.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After sending my sons to bed my oldest comes in our room to let us know that one of the cats caught a mouse in his room.
My husband goes in to chase down the cat and retrieve the mouse so it can be disposed of.
The cat freaks and drops the mouse so we spend 10 minutes looking for this baby mouse.
When my husband shook out one of the blankets the mouse jetted under my youngests son toddler bed.

Or so we thought…

He had run up part of the blanket and onto the bed where my son and I sat!
So for the last five or so minutes that we spent looking for the mouse he was sitting right next to me.

So I grab my toddler and ran to my older sons bed as fast as I could.

Needless to say my husband snagged up the blanket, beat it with a flashlight and took the whole thing outside to dump it in the snow.

I know, not as good as a gerbil in a ceiling fan, but I still thought of Wally as I was diving for that other bed!

2

So the big man was whaling on the blanket with a flashlight! What is the standard protocol for getting smooshed mouse guts out of bedding?

Along similar lines, I’m reading the Sunday paper in the living room yesterday, and I hear a shriek from downstairs. The unflappable Mrs D calmly states that eldest daughter “must have found the bird.” WTF? We don’t have a pet bird. The missus disappears into the basement, and returns shortly saying she let the bird out of the laundry room window.

Trying to maintain my calm, informed, lord-of-the-manor mien, I mention that I did not now we had a bird in the laundry room to begin with.
“Didn’t I tell you about it?”
uh-no.
“Let’s see, it must have been Wednesday …” Thereafter ensues a Hitchcockian tale of terror, involving chasing giant bloodthirsty mutant birds around the nether regions of our dwelling, interspersed with informed commentary as to avian flight tendencies when trying to shoo them out sliding doors, as opposed to double hung windows. Concluding with, “Well, so much happens around here on a given day that it must have slipped my mind.”

Excuse me, but I had no friggin idea of the thrill-a-minute existence in my absence such that chasing wildlife around inside of the house didn’t even merit a mention for four days! (I didn’t even ask how the damn thing got in, or whether she simply believed it had dematerialized when she stopped chasing it on Wed.)

And I thought I had the stressful job commuting to and from the big city every day! It’s not a job, it’s a vacation.

3

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I have a bit of a mouse problem in my house. In fact just last Friday I found one of the poor little critters face down. Drowned in half a cup of coffee.

A few months ago the nurse I share my house with calls me over, wide-eyed and pale and clutching a Lightsaber, and I immediately think “oh Christ, one of her kids has hurt him/herself” because she just can’t spit out what the problem is.

“What? What is it?”
“Geegah!!” She points upstairs.
“What?! Is one of the kids hurt!?”
“Nah!! It’s a thing! A thing on the thing!!”
“A thing?”
“A thing!!”
“On the thing?”
“On the thing!!”
“What thing?”

So she drags me upstairs by my shirtsleeve, and all the way up my heart’s pounding and I’m picturing one of her kids blue with a Fisher-Price person lodged in his/her throat.

Once in her kid’s room she starts whacking violently at a blanket with the Lightsaber (I at this point am a little disarmed and wondering if the good nurse has started taking her work home with her). She manages a glancing blow on a space heater and out shoots a mouse, and not even a big mouse, but rather a little teeny cute mouse which proceeds to cower in a corner and regard us with terrified little bead eyes. The nurse squeals, I groan silently.

So, we concoct a plan: I would wrangle it out from under the bed with the Lightsaber. She would capture it alive by dropping an empty bucket of Duplo blocks over him. Then we’d release it into the wilderness to rejoin his woodland pals (and probably get eaten by an owl).

Only now in retrospect do I realize that we should have reversed our tasks.

You see, I fulfilled my part of the plan perfectly. I had no problem at all flushing out the mouse. A good whack on the wall above his head was plenty of motivation for him to move. The problem was that he made a lightning-fast beeline right at the nurse who then made a strangled squeaking noise, dropped the bucket, jumped on the bed and started crying. I, now totally cranked with adrenaline, then proceeded to brain poor little Jerry to death with a telescoping plastic Lightsaber.

It was not one of the finer moments in human/animal relations.

4

oh my, light sabers and flashlights, what is the world coming to?!? i just pick the cute little things up by the tail and place them outside the door.

beetles and their kith and kin, however deserve nothing less than total, unrestrained panic; with evacuation of the dwelling until the exterminator arrives.

great stories y’all. this page is heading for the printer.

5

Thanks for the interesting story. Gods I miss reading things from Wally here.

:frowning:
Sqrl

6

Inky, get over here and clean up my monitor.

Oh GOD that was funny.

7

As I have learned from experience, you have to be somewhat carefull when attempting the tail based technique.

There was an anoying little mouse that had been running around my house for a couple days, that I never could quite catch. Then one day I sat on the couch, and saw a little blur, I jumped up, and managed to step on his tail, right as he reached a thick shag rug in the middle of the floor. I reached down to pick it up, but it had a damn good hold of the rug, which I didn’t really notice as my hunter andrenaline kicked in, so about the time I noticed I was holding the mouse and half the rug up by the little tail, the tail snapped off. I had created a spring loaded ball of fur, that left a nice spray of blood all over everything as it tumbled across the floor at approximately mach 2.5 until in fortunately(for me, not the mouse) smashed into the wall, and got dazed.

8

Once in a nearly empty bowling alley where my husband worked, a bat flew in and landed on the lanes. Various workers screamed and ran about, but my fearless hubby came to the rescue. Armed with a large towel, he (a rather large man) hopped around, trying to throw the towel on the poor, disoriented little rodent, who flopped about in the oil, flapping his wings. Finally he captured the poor little thing, and cleaned it off as best he could. Then he released it to the skies. It was so funny watching him leaping and hopping, knowing he was just a wee bit disconcerted about the fact that this was a bat, for God’s sake, don’t get on me!

9

You know I have no promlem with mice as long as they aren’t jumping or running at me.
I used to have a pet rat for petes sake.
Spiders (no offence to any here) scare the death out of me. But I have to be brave in front of the children.

BTW My youngest son slept in our bed last nite. Hopefully he will be over it by tonite!

And like I said this excursion reminded me of Wally so I knew that I had to tell it here.

Keep em’ commin guys!

10

I gotta admit to being a softie, here. I used to live in a house that was just infested with mice–which my cat loved, but I did not. One day I came home from work and found that one had fallen into my bathtub and couldn’t get out. Cute little teensy weensy baby mouse. What’s a girl to do? I would never have called a man to dispose of it for me, 'cause I didn’t have one handy and besides, it would be too humiliating to need rescuing from a mouse. My cat was nowhere to be found, so I couldn’t count on him to dispose of it for me…No way I’m touching it or doing anything to kill the poor little guy. So what did I do? I draped a towel over the side of the tub where he could reach it and climb out (and run free in my darned house) and I left. :rolleyes:

11

That is so sweet! :wink:

12

One of my friends breeds birds and so he has bird seed. So he gets mice in the winter.
He called me one nite freaked out because he saw a mouse.
He got mouse traps and set them out and waited…
I get a phone call at 2am with him screaming at me to come over and get the mouse that is screaming from the mouse trap.
Just too gross for him to deal with.

13

As I mentioned in this thread I used to live in a house that had quite a mouse problem. Disgusting little buggers but I do happen to have a few humorous stories.

Once my brother Dave was over at my house and we were sitting on the couch watching TV. Dave is tall and thin, and he has especially skinny legs, he was wearing work type boots and jeans. The reason for this fashion commentary will soon be obvious.

As we sat there, we noticed a little mouse running across the floor. Dave stuck his boot out to stop it. The mouse stopped, then jumped right up on top of his boot and proceeded to crawl up his pant’s leg–on the inside. Dave’s skinny legs gave the mouse a whole lot of room to run around. He was slapping at his thighs then wincing as the mouse’s little toenails dug into his skin. Then we noticed the mouse was making his way up the leg to his crotch. Dave’s eye’s widened in horror as he realized that he had gone “commando” and the mouse was making his way straight for “the boys”.

He let out a yowl and started trying to get his pants off but could only get them down to his knees because of his heavy boots. With much smacking and scuffling and yiping around he managed to get his boots off while the mouse ran around the crotch of his pants- which was now in the vicinity of his knees–and jumped from pant leg to pant leg. All the while he was trying to keep his family jewels out of harm’s way. Finally the poor creature jumped out of the pants and onto the floor where he ran a few steps and fell over dead.

I was of no help during all this 'cause if was reduced to tears of laughter. Dave was not amused.

14

::note to self - finish beverage before opening this thread ever again::
The Mermaid, that story is priceless. I too am crying. (Hell, I’ve been laughing throughout this thread, but that’s the best on yet. Bet he won’t be going commando again, huh?)

15

We once had a cat who was (initially) terrified of mice. We always knew there was one about, because she would freak out. She acted like one of those stupid girls in horror movies, she hears a sound and just has to go check it out (even though it is clearly the horrible serial-killer … um, mouse… hiding in the bathroom) - but off they go anyway, stiff-legged in terror, fur sticking out all over. Okay, so the stupid girls in horror movies don’t usually puff up like that…

Anyway, we moved to the East Coast, and apparently it was only Colorado Mountain mice that terrified her. East Coast mice apparently play better. I came upstairs one day after hearing something strange going on in the dining room. The (formerly mouse-phobic) cat was playing with a mouse. Happily batting it back and forth between her paws, then tossing it HIGH in the air, then batting it around again, biting it a few times in a friendly way…

I watched quietly, having noticed the mouse was very dead, and curious as to whether she’d eat it or not.

Nope. Having finished an exciting round of whap-splat-fling-bite, the cat watched the dead mouse carefully for a moment, mewed plaintively at it, and poked it with a paw, as if to say, ‘your turn, run around and play, now!’ She poked it gently a few more times (without using claws, I noted), and looked at me and made her sad cry again.

Said cat then launched into the full whap-splat-fling-bite rountine again (I’d swear she sighed first). (Making it very much a case of ‘here, let me show you how it is done!’) Followed by another couple of pokes to get it playing again. Darn mouse stopped playing! The cat even came over to me and led me back to the mouse, then poked it again… like, ‘Hey, fix it! The darn mouse is busted.’ I took it away. Cat was very miffed.

On the other hand, we didn’t have much in the way of a mouse problem after that. Mice don’t like playing whap-splat-fling-bite, apparently.

Personally, I (usually) only freak if a spider takes me by surprise (suddenly dropping from the ceiling in front of my face is a big bad no-no). Mice are fine, as are most bugs. Except those long-legged centipedes … ::shiver:: … ick.

16

Speaking of spiders.

Once during the early 80’s, my sister Tanya came over to our house and she had just bought some coke-the white powdery kind. (never touch the stuff myself) Anyway, as she stood in the dining room unfolding the little piece of paper it was packaged in, a huge spider just dropped down from the ceiling right in front of her face. She let out a big shreik and swatted at the monster scattering a gram of cocaine far and wide onto the beige-tan not immaculately clean carpet. For about an hour this is what I heard.

Oooh here’s some, Gaaac- lint

No, I think this is some, Gaaac more lint

Wait over here, Gaaac I don’t know what that was

What about over here Gaac

Uhm Gaaac

I finally said “This must be why they call it dope”
Tanya was not amused either.

17

The only mouse story I have took place when I was 6. We had two big, fluffy, declawed Persian cats. We had a medium sized mouse scurrying around our house. The two cats immediatly pounced on the critter and procedded to play with it. That damn mouse starts raising up on it’s hind legs and yelling at the two cats! The two cats just sat there dumbfounded. He looked like one of the mice in Cinderella! My mother let this play between the cats and mouse go on for… 20 minutes, before she packed the 4 kids into the car and took us to the mall. She proceeds to call my dad from a payphone and tells him to go home from work and get the mouse. When we came back the two cats were sprawled across the hall exhasted and the mouse had been set free by my dad. Damn Persians!