this is war.

For those of you following along with my battle against a mouse, here's the latest installment.

Today I came home and saw this:

That's my daughter's car, which is parked in the garage while she is off at college.  When I first saw this I thought that a mouse (or entire Army of mice) had eaten her car seats and this was the stuffing coming out of the door.  There was no way I was going to look in the car . . . I just went in the house and started wondering where she could get another car since this one would certainly be wrecked.

Luckily for me my brother stopped over.  I pointed this out to him and he casually opened the car door.  I ran for the steps, sure that at least one mouse, if not 100, would come falling out.  Instead . . . nothing happened!  He showed me that the car seat was still intact and said it didn't smell like mouse in the car so he doesn't think there's one in there.  He said that what's on the garage floor and sticking out of the door is insallation, most likely from a house.  There's no insallation in the garage, so I don't know where it came from but I'm thrilled to learn that her car is ok.

I have moved the dog back outside to his kennel since it has warmed up, so I think I'll set a new trap and see what happens.

To be continued . . .

I'm going to call the mouse Charlie because he is winning.

Hi, I'm Nancy and I'm TERRIFIED of mice.  Seriously terrified.

Last night I was out in the garage waiting for the dog, who was outside doing his thing.  I heard a noise near a box and instantly knew there was a mouse hiding in, behind or under the box.  I got the dog back in for protection (?) and then kicked the box.  I'm not sure what I thought would happen, but what did happen is that a mouse came out from under the box!  I screamed like a little girl and ran for higher ground (the steps).  The dog . . . he can't hear a thing so he didn't know I'm was screaming bloody murder and he never saw the mouse so he was absolutely no help.  I went back in the house where I was safe.

Mouse 1, Nancy 0.

Today I got up the courage to set one of those fancy new mousetraps - the kind that traps the offender inside so that people like me don't have to see anything once it is caught.  I put some peanut butter in the trap and set it in the garage near the box where I saw the mouse last night.  About an hour later I went out to check the trap and this is what I saw:

So the dog can't hear anything but his sense of smell is still intact.  He must have smelled the peanut butter and was willing to destroy the plastic mouse trap to get at it.  I guess next time I'll have to put the mouse trap somewhere the the dog can't get at it!

Mouse 2, Nancy 0

To be continued . . .