Thursday, March 12, 2009 By: Suzanne

Home Story - 3/12/09

I decided I'm going to start including some of my own stories, what I'll call "Home Story." Often my animals do some the funniest things and I would love to share these wonderful things that happen around my house. After all, this blog is called "Storytime With Tonya and Friends." It's about time I include some stories about us. My original idea was to have my sister post some her stories or chapters from her book on here, that's where the "and Friends" part came from, but I think the idea fell flat with her! I'm truly sad too, she's a wonderful writer (and hopefully reading this too)!

My first story is about the mouse in my house. Yes, I'm almost positive that I have my very own Jerry around here somewhere. A little info on my house might help to begin with. Picture a cute little house on the outside that looks like it could be a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, small living room type house on a corner lot. Ok, now take that house and cut it in thirds. Make the front 1/3 of the house a small one bedroom apartment and the back 2/3 thirds another one bedroom apartment. I rent the back of the house. My kitchen faces the north and the back door (my front door) faces the east. I noticed sometime in the fall, when the wind started blowing more, that my kitchen was fairly breezy. I could literally feel the wind rushing through the cabinets. Everything that touched an outside wall to the north and west had air rushing through it. I put plastic sheeting up over the windows, the cabinets under the sink and the cabinet just the left of that (which is just one large cabinet on the inside). This means, of course, that I can't use these cabinets but it's better than the wind rushing in. It doesn't completely kill the wind though. I have a refrigerated utensil drawer. I kid you not. When it's cold outside, I could freeze Popsicles in my utensil drawer.

Now recently I found mouse droppings in one of my drawers in the kitchen. Needless to say this freaked me out and I cleaned everything in the drawer. I was curious though, why I wasn't seeing signs of the little guy anywhere else. When my mom had mice in her house, we saw evidence of them everywhere. Why only this one drawer?

One night I was sitting on my couch reading. The whole house was pretty quiet and heard this scratch, clank, scratch sound coming from the kitchen. It seriously sounded like someone trying to get in the house. I live with two fairly noisy dogs, so I can't imagine anyone believing they can break into my house but I was still a little freaked out. I went into the kitchen and noticed the sound seemed to be coming from the cabinet under the sink. I opened the doors only to see...A MOUSE! The damn thing is scurry down a little hole in the floor of the cabinet to get under the house!

Now remember when I said I put plastic sheeting up there? This means not only can I not use these cabinets, but also that the mouse has no way to get to the rest of my house unless he makes new holes. I've seen a teeny little hole going to the drawer where I found the droppings so I guess that's how he got there but I don't believe he can get to any other part of my kitchen. I even closed the dogs out of the kitchen one day while I was at work and put out some food on the floor. It was still there when I got home. I'm pretty sure if he could have got to it, he would. Mice love people and dog food.

My cocker spaniel, Loki, aparently has noticed our newest resident. Every morning now when I get up and go make my coffee, I have to kick Loki out of my way because he has his nose stuck under the cabinet. I can only figure he either hears or smells something back in there and is just WAITING for it to come out. I dare you, he seems to be telling it. He has to be forced out of the kitchen, because god forbid he not be in there if it does decide to tempt fate and show itself. After coming back in the house from doing his business, he literally RUNS to the kitchen to stick his nose in his spot. It's starting to get a little disturbing. I haven't seen any evidence of the little guy in a couple weeks, but Loki seems obsessed with him. See for yourself:



1 comments:

Andrea Aponte said...

Thanks for that very, very subtle hint about me! I just don't feel like I have enough to offer yet. . . Maybe next fall when Sage starts preschool:)

Whenever we would get field mice in my parents' house, Gypsie was quite effective at cornering them so we could catch them by putting an empty garbage can over them and then slipping flat cardboard underneath. One time she found one on her own though, and we discovered it too late. She had "played" with it until it just could couldn't take it anymore:( She didn't eat though cuz she wasn't a hunting dog. I think your mouse's days may be numbered with Loki around!

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