This morning was pretty exciting in our household. It started last night after the debate. I had been grading homework and was sorting the pile by last-name for ease in returning to students. From the corner of my eye, I saw something move by Hayleigh's doll house. It was a mouse!
I called Jake downstairs to help me corner it. Jake was pretty excited to be participating, but didn't really know what I wanted him to do. He sat by the couch looking attentive, but had no clue where the mouse was. So I proceeded to build up some barricades out of boxes to contain the mouse where I might be able to catch it. Unfortunately, the mouse was crouching, whiskers a-quivering, under the couch. I might be able to contain it, but had no chance of capturing it.
So I used a little wooden box that holds board puzzles as part of the wall and decided to try to spook the mouse into using that "shelter" for protection, at which time I would have trapped the mouse inside. (Gleeful chuckle :-) Then, I went to get a broom. I used the handle to direct the mouse toward the corner with the box. But the couch legs got in the way, and I couldn't get it all the way.
As I moved, the mouse darted out from under the couch and back into the kitchen. Now we had Jake's full attention! Off went the mouse. Off went Jake. They both hit the wood floor of the kitchen.
Did you know that a mouse has trouble on wood floors? Did you know a dog has trouble on wood floors? I wish I had a video 'cause it looked like Tom and Jerry with their legs sliding on the floor.
The mouse darted under the door of the pantry. The bottom of our pantry has some big buckets as well as bags of wheat and lots of plastic bags waiting for their turn to be either garbage can liners or recycled. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was HQ for the mouse.
I moved my barricade (or at least one box) from the living room into the kitchen right in front of the door. I didn't want the mouse to make a run while I was removing the hiding places in the closet. One bag at a time and one bucket at a time, I started to clean out the closet. I learned that mice really like macaroni and cheese. Mostly the cheese packets, but plenty of noodles sitting on the floor. Jake liked me cleaning that up -- crunch, crunch. One bag of wheat also had to be disposed of later. When I was down to two buckets, the mouse started scurring about on the wooden floor, but couldn't get past the box.
Until it did.
It jumped on top of the box and landed between my sock-laden feet. I tried to hold my feet together and manage to move my not-quite-as-useful-as-I-thought bottle to catch the mouse, but it hopped over my ankles, through my legs, and into the kitchen. Jake followed in earnest, and I was behind Jake. The mouse hid under the dishwasher.
So I proceeded to use a flashlight to see if I could see it. There was also hole where the drain pipe goes from the dishwasher to under the kitchen sink, so I tried to look under the sink. No mouse in evidence. I moved my barricade into the kitchen. No more escaping! But plenty of places to hide. I knew it could make it under the stove, under the kitchen cupboard, and under the dishwasher. I tried to shove towels and rugs into the holes that I could find. Then I began to disassemble the base of the dishwasher to get a look where we saw the mouse hide.
Four screws later, I had the bottom removed and started to look. The beam of the flashlight scanned back and forth, back and forth. Plenty of bunnies, but no mouse (aw-chew!). Jake found something interesting to lick and probably would have climbed under to explore if he would have fit. But no mouse. We closed up the dishwasher once again, left the barricade in place, and went to bed. Heather was asleep and would have to wait until morning for the exciting news. (Besides, who could sleep knowing a mouse was roaming the kitchen.)
In the morning, Michael came in at 6:30 to look for socks or something. Now that she was awake, I informed Heather of my adventure to explain why the rooms looked different. (Barricades in the kitchen are not really status quo, nor is an emptied pantry on the kitchen table.) Heather went down to help Michael finish getting ready for school. Five minutes later, Michael returned to tell me that Heather was hearing "scritch, scritch, scritch" sounds under the cupboard.
So I went downstairs and opened the cupboard under the sink where the sound was louder. Yessirree, that mouse had stuck the night out under the kitchen sink. We soon realized it had gone into the box of our very old bread mixer. I put duct tape over the hole (no more escaping little Ralph!) pulled the box out and set it down inside of a large Rubbermaid container (about the size of a big cooler). But the container was too small to open the lid of the box and still keep the mouse guaranteed to stay inside the big container.
I grabbed my pocketknife and cut away one of the sides of the box. Silence. I started to remove parts one at a time. Silence. After a few items, the mouse scurried about. I had it! I turned the box upside down and shook that mouse down into the Rubbermaid container. The problem was contained! It tried to jump but could only reach halfway up.
The easiest, most sanitary disposal method was upstairs --- a snake. But Michael had to go to school, so I put the lid on the bucket and the mouse would be on death row until the afternoon. Just at that moment, Nathaniel, Hayleigh and Zachary announced their awakening and entered the room. Since everyone was awake, we called Michael back from the bus stop and decided to shorten the mouse's wait.
I caught the mouse from the box with a glass jar and we headed upstairs. Moving the snake's terrarium to the middle of the room so everyone had a good view, we dropped the mouse and started to watch. At first the snake seemed asleep. Until the mouse started running around and jumping. Then the snake started looking around and smelling. It made a few bad lunges, grabbing onto itself while the mouse was already at the other side.
The mouse started to bury itself in the woodchips, and we thought it would stay hidden from the snake. So I took Michael off to school. But evidently, the mouse had made a fatal mistake. The snake scooted over the top of where the mouse was hiding and proceeded to constrict on top of the mouse. The mouse was at the least unconscious when the snake turned and gobbled it up.
Everyone was pretty excited. Jake wanted his chance at getting the mouse and could barely keep away from the glass. I'm sure the kids will have had a fun day telling this story at school!
Sorry. No pictures -- who thinks about pictures at a time like this?
Whew! That went by in a hurry. On Christmas Eve, we spent the day packing for our trip to England. Around 2:30, Regina headed off to church for the family service. I stayed home and made dinner, and when she got back around 6:00 we sat down to eat our modest recreation of her family's traditional Christmas Eve dinner. I am what you might call a highly literal chef: Even though there were only two of us at the table, I still prepared the entire frozen batch of manicotti and an entire loaf of garlic bread. I was so focused on trying to get everything done that I didn't really stop to think about how much food I was making! At any rate, here is Regina sitting down to enjoy the meal on our brand new Christmas dishes -- with lovely pitcher, sugar bowl, and creamer from Kim! -- before we opened our presents and headed off to the late Christmas Eve service.
On Wednesday we repacked and got ready for our early morning flight to London on Thursday. I won't try to describe our full England adventure just yet, but here are a handful of pictures of us across the pond.
Oxford, as you can imagine, was a real high point for me: Here I am in the nook of a pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends used to hang out, surrounded by mementos of their literary circle, pretending I'm waiting for them all to arrive. You can tell I'm pretending because my eyes are closed! The pub is called The Eagle and Child, but Lewis and Tolkien liked to call it the Bird and Baby. 
On our last morning in England, we climbed to the whispering gallery in St Paul's Cathedral in London, very s-l-o-w-l-y, marveled at the fact that you really can whisper to the person on the opposite end of the cathedral dome, and then agreed that England had worn us out. We can't wait to go back -- but somehow I think it may be a while! 
