Oh No! A MOUSE in the HOUSE

First a little background:  I grew up most of my summers during elementary and middle school years at my family's ranch in Brackettville, TX - pretty much the mid-point between Del Rio and Uvalde.  It was wonderful.  The Jones Ranch was founded by my great grandparent on my mom's side of the family.

My great grandparents had one boy and five girls (which could be a whole other blog).  So it was pretty much a compound of all my great grandparents' children.  It was during a time of parent's divorcing and no one knew what to do with the kids during the summer - so we packed up and headed to the ranch.  There was no TV at the ranch - way too far out in the country.  Spent most days at Fort Clark Springs swimming.  If we weren't at the pool we would run wild at the ranch catching horny toads, raising baby rabbits that had been abandoned, shooting up trarantulas with a BB gun, watching my uncles chopping off the head's of rattle snakes etc.  You get the picture.

Fast forward 30 something years.  I don't like frogs, snakes, lizards, gerbils, hamsters, rats nor mice!  I've lost that lovng feeling of varmits.  My cat has a fondness of lizards.  He plays with them but never kills them.  My son, Matthew (The Lizard Hero), is the one that will save the lizard and toss them outside.

My cat upped the ante on Tuesday.  The nice lady, Martha who cleans my house, was here this past Tuesday.  I was headed out the door to take my daughter to the doctor.  Martha motions that the cat brought something in.  I thought it was just another lizard.  She couldn't think of the english name for a mouse.  So I saw it a couple of times - just a small little field mouse.  But I DID NOT want it in my HOUSE.  Luckily, it was time for my quarterly pest control and I told them about the mouse.

So while I waiting for them to show up, I saw the mouse go into the understairs closet.  I tucked a pair of sweatpants under the door hoping I could keep it trapped there until Craig showed up.  As soon as Craig came in the house, the mouse ran into my room and staight for the closet.  Craig went to get gloves to catch it.  As soon as he came back into my room, the mouse went under my dresser and straight for the bathroom.  Ah - we got him!  No such luck.  The mouse then went into linen/closet in the bathroom.  Needless to say, neither of the closets are NEAT!  Craig them laid out sticky mice catchers. I started digging all the stuff out of the closet and the mouse ran out and got stuck.  I asked Craig not to kill him - so he said get some cooking oil.  He took it out back and poured the oil and the mouse ran free.

New rule at my house:  CAT is on Lock down from freely roaming outside and bringing me presents that I never wanted.  So the MOUSE is now out of my HOUSE - So Happy!

More later -