The mouse

Now that a big bulk of our projects are done, I'm not blogging quite as often--although there's still quite a lot on our "to-do" list. Dennis has declared this to be "break time" even though he has started yet another project. He tore out our "stairs" that were built into the lawn on the side of the house. At one time, it probably worked and was very pretty. In fact, I wanted to keep the stairs because the hill is so steep going down that you either have to slide on your butt or end up running down the hill whether you want to or not.

I thought I had a picture to show you how run down it has become but I guess I don't. Basically, the stairs were made out of mud and grass with timber logs to support it as steps. The logs had rotted out over the years and the stairs have become sloped and lopsided, making it dangerous to go down the hill. You basically have to hang on to the side of the house in order to get down the hill.

So we tore them out.

 

 

This picture here is actually showing the backyard where an old tree stump was pulled out. Dennis has a friend who has a Bobcat and he let us use it for a day. Unfortunately, the bobcat completely ruined the lawn.

 

 

Also, that path of dirt is a little part of the hill where the staircase used to be. It is now a hill of dirt. For now, I'm not sure what we're going to do with it, other than try to get grass growing on it. I kind of liked the staircase idea but Dennis said that built-in stair cases in lawns rarely work. So most likely, it will just simply be a hill .

 

 

Other than that, we haven't been doing much, so I don't have much to show you for projects.

 

 

So now I will tell you about our mouse encounter from last night. Our old problem of mice from last year has revisted us in our new house, it seems.

 

I had gotten up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom, being all blind and groggy as I usually am in the middle of the night, when I had a little surprise that promptly made me wide awake. I had flipped on the bathroom light to find a little mouse, sitting right there in the middle of the bathroom floor. It looked as surprised as I did, and it darted behind the toilet while I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I did let out a little "Eeep!" which I stifled because even in my surprised state, I didn't want to wake everyone up. I waited a little to see if the mouse would reappear or if it had found a hole in the wall, because even though I now did not want to use the bathroom, I really, really, needed to. Just when I was about to venture in, the mouse suddenly darted from behind the toilet to behind the slightly opened door. I "Eeeped!" again, this time a little louder and with a little jump because I thought it had crawled under the door and was headed right at me. But it was sitting behind the door, peeking out at me through the crack, and we stayed there, studying each other.

 

My little stifled screams woke Dennis up and he came out to see what was wrong. I told him I had seen a mouse, and he said, "Are you sure it was a mouse?" I looked at him slightly annoyed and said, "Dennis, I am sure." After all, I was standing there ready to pee in my pants and yet still would not enter the bathroom because I was so sure!

 

So Mr.Skeptic went to the bathroom to investigate while I hid in my bed. I had shut the door so the mouse wouldn't come flying into our room, and I sat there listening. At first there was nothing but silence and I knew that Dennis was standing there waiting for the mouse, when I suddenly heard a , thump! THUMP! Crash! And then an "Augh!!!" And I knew that Dennis now believed that I saw a mouse.

 

A few minutes later he came in and threw the work gloves that he had on onto the dresser and I asked him if he caught the mouse. He snorted and said, "Caught him?! He bolted out of the bathroom, down to the living room!"

 

He also sheepishly admitted that the thumps and scream was due to him jumping when the mouse suddenly reappeared and came charging at him--which caused him to scream.

 

I would just like to say that this is proof that it isn't just us women that tend to scream at mice.

 

Anyway, we now have entered "mouse season" and have a mouse loose in the house somewhere. It makes me uncomfortable to not know where it's hiding place is; at our old house we knew where all our mice lived which made it easier to avoid and also easier to catch with traps. I also don't like the thought of killing mice, no matter the fact that they are pests, rodents, disease carriers and so on. This what Dennis always says whenever I lament over a dead mouse but it does no good to reason with me.

 

They may be disease carriers, but they are also so darn cute.