Mouse in the house

zoom in to see it more clearly

My grandson Sam can now text me and he introduced me to emoticons. They are one of the "languages" on my keyboard.

Can you decipher the emoticon story above? 

The recent mouse encounter had a happy ending--for me.  

When the weather turned wintery we had a rodent refugee. We discovered its presence when some insulation from the sides of the dishwasher spilled onto the floor beneath it. We didn't even have to guess at the cause.

We first encountered mice in a very similar situation thirty years ago.

We were living in a rural area outside of Denver, Colorado. There, like here, our house was isolated and surrounded by open fields. When temperatures dropped the vermin squeezed their way into the warm house. We saw evidences of the unwelcome visitors and set traps, put out poison, and stuffed steel wool around the pipes coming up from under the house. We caught some, then caught some more, and then they got cheeky. I actually had one grey head pop up through the shallow metal pan under the stove burners!

One very cold night we turned on the seldom-used oven to prepare dinner. As it warmed emitted a nasty smell. We checked the diaper pail. (Back then we had to wash the cloth diapers). We checked the garbage. The oven neared the desired cooking temperature and the stench forced us to turn off the stove. But the odor had filled the small rooms and we opened the front door even though it was 20 degrees outside, to let in fresh air.

When the landlord came to check out the problem, he discovered numerous nests in the insulated side panels of the stove!

So this winter's sifting insulation tipped us off. A greedy little bugger, the mouse quickly followed his nose to the peanut butter baited trap.  As my story describes, the old man (my husband) caught the mouse. I ( the little old woman of emoticon language) was very happy.  We haven't seen any other mice since.


I hope you have a winter, with 

Share your skirmishes against the rodents.