It was a Wednesday night. What you should know about Wednesday nights is that my fiancé goes out for “boys night”, and the other thing you should know is that when he comes home, he sleeps like a baby (thanks to a few cocktails with the boys). Most nights he sleeps soundly anyway, but on a Wednesday night, he’s out.
I am asleep and at 3am, I wake up. This is not unusual since I wake to go to the bathroom at least once in the middle of the night. But I wake because I hear a noise. I have become very attune to noises since I moved to the farm. I pop up a bit in bed and think it is rain hitting the window. However, as I get my bearings – I notice there is no rain yet, and the noise didn’t stop. It comes and goes; just enough to cause me to think it is my imagination. Little noise here, stop. Little noise here, stop. I tell myself I am being paranoid, and I get up to go to the bathroom.
When I return to the bedroom, my fiancé is (surprisingly!) moving and waking up. (Thank goodness because in about 5 minutes he was about to get shaken out of his Wednesday night slumber, no doubt!) I don’t say a word yet as he gets up to go to the bathroom. I sit quietly and listen…and I hear it again. It sounds something like this “scratch, scratch, scratch. scrap, scrap, scrap” (except really fast), and then it stops. When he comes out of the bathroom, I calmly say, “Did you hear that noise?” He says, “What noise?”, when I am sure this man is thinking “oh woman, you live on a FARM!” I tell him, “Wait. It comes and goes.” Then I pray that I am not losing my mind. It’s not an intruder – well, not of the human kind, I already know – but it is something! Then, it happens again, quickly, then stops. Then it happens again. I look at him in the dark room at 3am in the morning and know he has now heard it.
I fear that there is an animal in what I call the mud room. The area between our two doors. I assume that the door has gotten blown open, and something has gotten in there. This is what I imagine and I am already not looking forward to this. You can enter our kitchen from two sides, so Josh goes one way, I creep the other, turning on a light on the end table in the bedroom for security. We are still in the dark near the kitchen, but then Josh's brave soul kicks on the kitchen light. I stand at a distance and whisper, “Check there…”, pointing towards the mud room, as we hear the slight sound again. But it is as if the intruder knows we are looking for him/her, so the noise has subsided to a faint scrap now and then.
Josh starts to walk towards the doors, and there is it, the massive noise begins in fury. He steps back a bit and pauses. He looks at me, and I have gasped, and he says, “It’s in there” and points to the garbage can. I say, “WHAT is in there???” He says, “Don’t freak out, but it’s a mouse.”
A mouse. In our trashcan. I just changed the trash bag at 9:30pm. How in the h***?! I say, “Are you sure?” The noise shuffles a bit and Josh says, “I can see him.” Oh, awesome.
We have had a mouse problem lately – two have died in our ventilation system, and let me tell you, that is NOT pleasant. A dead mouse is nothing to mess around with. This is serious. Now we have a live one, and my only saving grace was that the darn thing was inside the trash can, trapped. Clearly trying his best to claw his way out of the bag. Am I in tune with sounds or what?!
We both stand there, in the kitchen. What they heck to do? Josh says if he takes the trash bag outside, the mouse will just claw his way out. I am seriously contemplating how this has happened. I didn’t know mice could climb so how in the heck did he crawl his way into our (tall) kitchen trash can (with no lid)?! I am stumped by this. Josh looks at me, and I think he was impressed with my calmness. He says, “I know you don’t believe me, but we have never had a mouse problem in this house before. Ever.” I do believe him, but the issue is, we do now. We have to figure this out. This is creeping me out. A mouse. In the house. In our trash can. We have traps around the house, but yet, who knew the trash can was the trap?! So not funny.
Josh moves the trash can to the mud room and covers it, putting it by the door, saying he will take care of it in the morning. I laugh because the other thing I know about Wednesday nights is that I go to work before this social butterfly gets up on Thursday mornings – so I have to walk past that trash can with mouse contained (I hope) before he does. (And, this morning there was NO DOUBT that the mouse was dead. Have you ever smelled a dead mouse? If not, pray you never have to...). He promises me it will be fine (true to his promise, he took care of dead mouse today).
I am impressed with my ability to cope with this. I would not have done so well 3-6 months ago. Do I like having mice in my house? Nope. Hope we get a game plan – I will be pushing for one. I understand and expected rodents to be around in the country, but this is getting crazy. The mice will not win. I am not Dr. Doolittle but I will win. Whenever I have a rodent/bug/spider/fly/cricket/etc. in my life/house, I get on a mission to win. I take it down. These mice don’t know who they are messing with. It will take some time but we will own our house back!
We lay back down to go to sleep, and I start laughing. I say, “At least I have something to blog about tomorrow!”. Around 6:45am, I hear a noise, and I pop up slightly in bed. Josh, with his eyes closed, touches my back and tells me, “it’s okay, it’s only the rain.” And this time he’s right.
