Egads! A Moose! A Mice! A MOUSE!

Last night Jessie and I were watching TV. I was knitting and looking at something by Monty's cage when I see a little black thing run and sit by the couch. I thought "Now, that's weird... how can Monty's ear be moving there if he's in the cage..." and then it dawned on me "Jessie! There is a mouse. There is a mouse by your water glass. Oh no! HO Oh no!" Jessie made an appropriately loud screech and jumped up onto the back of the couch. The mouse disappeared and I went to get Dad. "Well.... we don't have any mouse traps so I guess we'll just have to wait until the snow melts to get some." That was lame so Jessie and I tore things up trying to find it and trap it in a little pencil holder. That didn't work. We went back to watching something, I fell asleep and then eventually wandered back to my room to do some real sleep, none of this curled up on a couch clutching the remote next to my face business. The second I get into my jammies and crawl into bed Jessie screams "Hannah! HE'S BACK! That mouse is right here! Oh god oh god EEEeeeee....!" I jump out and throw my door open. Jessie is huddled on the couch staring at the bookshelf where mister mouse is hiding. We look and look and look and find nothing. I know he's there somewhere. At this point it's 11:30 and I'm getting a little fuzzy and sleepy. I decide to call it a night a second time, walk over to my room look in and there he is, sitting next to my bed staring at me. "OH shit! he's in here!" He looks enormous and black and scary-fast. I lunge at him with my Tupperware container (Jessie and I raided all of the cupboards in the house for Tupperware to trap things) and miss. He scurries under the bed to a pile of pillows on the floor and hunkers down. With a bit of adrenaline helping I chase him into a corner. "Jessie! Get in here NOW. I. Have. Him. Trapped. Behind. The. Yarn." She gets in with a Tupperware in each hand and one in her armpit. We spent a good half-hour chasing him back and forth behind my desk. He kept disappearing and we had to figure out what nook he was hiding in THIS time. At one point he wedged himself under my bucket of yarn (that thing must have had 1/8 inch of clearance) and then flew at me when I pulled the drawer out. Finally, at midnight, I managed to trap him under my plastic box and we dumped him into a larger Tupperware with some hay in it and a lid. Mom and Dad were no help so we decided to go show them our prize... at midnight. That was popular. Jessie flicked on the lights in their bathroom and Mom groaned "Whaa... you brought the mouse here? No Hannah, it's not cute. You can't keep it. No more pets Hannah." And then she put her glasses on and after some serious squinting at a corner in the box, "Oohhh, he a pretty cute shape! Oh look at his little tail... and those beady eyes. He is pretty cute, wait, is that bedding you have in there? No Hannah, no more pets!" It was decided that we would decide what to do with it in the morning, until then he could stay in the Tupperware. After a bit of rustling around I figured out that mister mouse was really more appropriately name Miss Lola the mouse because of her lack of man-bits.

Miss Lola spent the night with me in my room. You've got to admit that after all of that fuss, she's pretty sweet.And here she is this morning, before being released into the woods down the road.

Poor mousy-mouse. I don't think she's going to do very well. But in the end anything is better than poison.

The trees looked so pretty on the way back to the house. Poor mousy-mouse.