I am really not a fan of mice. ***WARNING: This might get graphic, it was not a fun time and if you are squeamish you may not want to read on.*** I actually put myself a little bit in the squeamish category which is why I have to write about it, so I can stop thinking about it. But they might come back that’s the problem. Ugh.

So here’s the story, once the girls started back at school I started hearing weird sounds around the house, scuffling, scratching, what I thought might be the ghost of Lola. I knew it probably was not Lola and more likely mice or rats, so I called a pest control company I used to use while I was working in property management – Willard’s Pest Control. They really have been great and helpful. They crawled under the house and into the attic to check for critters, blocked off all the entry points on the exterior of the house and laid out traps all around the house. Which is great, but guess what, the mice don’t come around when people are around, they wait until you leave.

Now we have a new ritual when we come home from any outing, we check the traps. The first mouse we caught was with the snap trap under our sink, the little guy was killed on the spot. The girls and I found him after the first Willard’s visit. We all screamed like little girls, then I stepped up and just swept him into the trash. It was not easy and I nearly threw up and cried a bit. I imagine some people might be wondering where was Andrew for all this fun? Well, all this happened during the work day, and apparently this is one of the lovely tasks that you get when you work from home. And really the first one to see it, is the one to deal with it, because you can’t let it sit there and wait for the husband or the exterminator to take it away. At least I could not do that and the girls would not leave it alone.

Yesterday was really the worst. We knew that the little guys were around the house because on Friday we found our peaches with mouse sized bites out of them.

Luckily, Willard’s was scheduled for a follow up visit on Monday, so I showed him the picture and told him about the turds we found in Siena’s room. He said that mice are sneakier than rats, so we needed to set more traps all around the house (not just under the sink). This time he set out sticky traps because the snap trap obviously didn’t get the one eating the peach. But the problem is the sticky trap doesn’t kill them right away. Mice get stuck alive and eventually bury their face in the glue, then suffocate to death – so horrible. So, he put the traps out, we left the house for a few hours and when we came home from Parkour (distraction link, getting to the worst part) we found the peach eater (or one of his friends) right out on my kitchen floor, stuck in the trap eating peanuts. I had to get rid of it, the girls both saw it, we all screamed, cried, I called my neighbor (not sure what I was hoping she could do) but it bought me some time. I sent Andrew a text: FUCK. I hate mice. He was on his bike so he didn’t see it until it was too late. As he biked up the driveway, he asked me why I was crushing the garbage with the cinder block? He obviously had not read my text.

So there you have it, I have killed 2 mice and it feels horrible. I really need them to get out of my house, this is not something I can live with.