Mouse Interrupted

Last night Jess made a Wal-Mart run on his way home from work. (This is pretty typical as Wal-Mart is about 30 minutes away from home, but only about 10 from work.) With milk for the girls I also mentioned that it was okay with me if he purchased a rat trap (on top of all the other traps we've had) to try to catch this wiley mousey. He was TOTALLY happy.

If you read comments this next bit will be redundant, I apologize.

My Mom mentioned that she hoped we found some pleasure in the movie MOUSE HUNT that Jessie borrowed as a sort of joke on the situation we'd been dealing with (a way to find some humor in something he'd been royal aggravated about). She, my Mom, also mentioned that when he was sorting out ways to deal with the mouse, ie: KILL IT, she'd totally thought of that movie, but didn't want to mention it at the time. (Jess gets really agitated... even angry over the buggers that torment him whether they be gnats, other bugs, or the mouse we had in our house.)

Well, we didn't even watch the movie, but that wasn't really the point. Jess remembered how it ended (I didn't!) he just got it as a lighter way to look at the situation he was so anxious and upset about.

When I initially (only moments ago) started writing in the bit about my Mom and the movie, I had a purpose and a destination for that train of thought, but it jumped its tracks and the whole thing completely disappeared. I can NOT remember (as is often a HUGE problem lately) the actual point for all of that. I'm leaving it, though, because I think it's sort of funny in and of itself.

If you haven't seen it already, here's a little video from my YouTube channel of Jess feeling smug and embarrassed while I teased him about "THE TEMPTATION TRAP" he'd made to GET the mouse.

Did you hear him say I'm so weird? WHO made the crazy tricky trap that the wiley RAT didn't even touch?? I say, WHO!? ;) heehee

Back to the main story. Jess brought the rat trap home last night and was trying to set it so he could put it out to trap our wiley mouse. It wouldn't set! No, seriously. He either chose the one poorly constructed one of the lot or the lot were all poorly constructed. We'll never know the answer because Jess was SO determined that this new trap should be up before he went to sleep that he took a huge wrench thing (for plumbing, I believe) and bent the wire that wasn't meeting the "set" point on the trap.

Have you seen a rat trap? I'm talking about the kind that is spring loaded like the mouse traps. If you have, then you'll know that the part that you pull back to "set" is made of some sort of metal wire that's as thick as an older child's finger! ROUGH STUFF. Jess almost hurt himself a couple of times (and I REALLY think this thing could break the finger of a man!), but managed to fix the problem so that the trap worked.

As it happens, mere hours after setting the trap and actually getting into bed (for Jess, it was only minutes after I went to bed) the trap went off. Well, that wasn't too surprising in itself. At least one of the mouse traps we'd had set out went off at least once a night every night since we've had them out. (SO annoying!) I didn't want to even attempt to set the trap so I woke Jess up to deal with it. I honestly thought the mouse had set it and run off as s/he'd been doing.

No so lucky, mousey. Come to find out, the mouse in our house was actually a brown rat! UGH! For some reason, the idea that this thing in our walls was a rat is SO much MORE revolting. Why is RAT so much more problematic for me than MOUSE? Let's take a comparison gander to see:












Even a rat mother (I'd had a feeling that the "mouse" was female and preggie: the reason for my hard time with the idea of killing it around the time Tea was born!). At this point, I simply hope that the imagined babies either never came to be or are too young to sustain life on their own!

Okay, so the trap was set off. Jess went out to ascertain, with my flashlight. dum-dum-da dum-dum-da.... DA DUM... He's a little breathless when he comes back to tell me, "The mouse is knocked out and coughing on the floor. I'm gunna go take care of it." What does 'take care of it mean,' you may wonder. Well, Jess has had a dream... a dream that came true last night (actually VERY early this morning, but I dicker). He's had a dream that when he caught the being in our wall, he would take it in the van, hold it over the side of the bridge into our town, revel in his triumph over it, and drop it into the river to be eaten by (he hopes) a tarpin. Why a tarpin? Well, I think it's mostly because tarpin are great fighters, so lots of fun to land for a fisherman and I guess he wants to feed the fish he fights? You don't eat tarpin, you drop 'em back... they're just fun to catch, apparently.

I, personally, think it's cruel and unusual punishment to WANT to catch a fish you have no intent to gut and eat... if you're gunna scare the bugger, you might as well finish the job! But I'm pretty sure I couldn't do anything with something I caught (one of the MANY reasons for choosing a man who COULD!).

Anyway...

A note before I close this LONG post... going over the bridge on the way to AND from church today, Jess wanted SO badly to tell me the exact point on the bridge that he dropped the rat from. I couldn't take it. I felt REALLY bad about the whole situation. I don't want a rat in my house, but I really didn't want to kill it either! I actually shed some tears (I totally hid from Jess!) over killing the potential mother of more mammals. *sigh* I could go on, but I really won't... I don't want you to know how totally and completely weird I am over the whole situation involving hurting and eventual death of the rodent that really didn't treat us well, to which I am an accomplice.

Another will follow as soon as I can manage to write up a much more joyful situation (at least for me). Hopefully with a picture or two.