He's no Stuart Little...

So, I was awake almost all last night - it's been a stressful week and yesterday just capped it off with a bang. DH left for work around 5:00 AM, and as I was still awake I put on Hell's Kitchen that I DVR'd recently. As I lay in bed, relaxing and about to go munch on some Doritos, I glanced toward the bedroom door that leads to the kitchen (yeah, yeah, idiotic layout). About that time, I see a furry nose - a tiny, brown, floor-level furry nose. It poked rather curiously around the corner, but disappeared before I could react. Well, other than to fly up to a sitting position. It was a house mouse - a field mouse until he apparently moved in with us.

The little nose poked around again, this time more boldly sashaying into the room as I instinctively tried to scare it. I barked - like a dog. (Hey, it was 5:30AM and I hadn't slept all night, okay?) He just waddles on in, cockily looking at me while he hugged close to the bookcase. Then disappeared - oh lovely. I suddenly thought "Wait! These guys are supposed to be timid. The old "more scared of you than you are of them", nocturnal, dark and quiet loving kind of creature." So, why was this little guy running toward the light, noise and big mean dog (that would be me, since I barked). Apparently, I have not only a house mouse, but a moronic house mouse.

At this point, I yelped. To my utter humiliation, I sounded like some helpless female from a bad romance novel.

What would a heroine do in those books? Well, definitely nothing heroic or brave - that's what her hero is for, right? So, I called up my local hero - that would be DH - for him to race to me in his chariot - that would be our ancient Toyota Camry.  Being the 21st century and all, I paged him. My knight in shining armor (aka clueless husband) laughed at me. He said, get this, "It's just a mouse."

Just a mouse?

Excuse me?

That's what they said in the Dark Ages about those little rodents of death carrying bubonic plague. Rats - mice - all carries of the Black Death. Today, they are still germ-infested, probably rabies-carrying, filthy vermin. If that things bit me, my needle-phobic body would have to endure multiple shots over multiple weeks. Not. Gonna. Happen. I wouldn't even feel clean after a full Silkwood shower.

At this point I am weeping. I have a cheeky mouse, a DH lacking empathy, and a body that has at last reached critical mass from all the stress. So, while DH laughs at me, the mouse doesn't go hide. No, he has to peek, run and cheekily turn and moon me while he whips his tail into what I swear was a rude gesture. Dh didn't believe me, so I hung up on him and called my mother. She has empathy. She told me to name him so I would feel better. I immediately thought, "dirty. cheeky. rude. French. His name's Pierre." (No offense to the French, well, okay - I used to live in Europe and was married to a Brit, so yeah, I guess there is some offense there.) So, I named him "Pierre", the cocky, cheeky, stinky mouse with the "Screw you, you dirty Ameri-cain" attitude. He was no Stuart Little, and there was no way I was adopting him like a son.

In the end, my knight bailed on me to stay at work. After having a hearty laugh at my expense. He didn't help by speculating on how Pierre got in the house - apparently through our back door. We would have to have the Michael Jordan of mice, so I felt better. Until DH politely corrected me by saying mice can jump quite high. As well as climb walls, kind of like Spiderman. Thanks DH. I am thinking of changing that D to an A.

As it turned out, my father (my original knight in shining armor) came to my rescue with mouse traps, bait and even a pellet gun in hand. It was better than the ballpene hammer he originally got - I put that idea to rest rather quickly. The only thing worse than a live rodent running around spreading germs is a dead rodent lying around spreading blood and brains all over your wood floors. We set the traps, I hid them so I don't see them - no sense actually watching the death sentence carried out.

I'll update tomorrow on me versus the mouse. Hopefully the new score will be me-1 and mouse-0.