There are lots of things that I didn’t anticipate about living in the forest. Things like trees falling or that pine needles will kill your grass or a bunny who acts like he owns the place.
Seriously, we have this bunny who guards the driveway. For the last week every time we leave he’s sitting at the mailbox waiting for us. He’ll come out and hang in the grass while we are outside. I’m pretty sure he’s just biding his time until we leave. What I really didn’t anticipate was our cat turning into Cujo.
After the whole mouse in the bathroom incident, I was pretty convinced that our cat was a pacifist. Plus, in the winter he decided to become an indoor cat. He gained some weight, permanently fixed his butt on my rocking chair and waited the cold weather out. This is all back story for today’s trauma.
So now that it’s spring/summer time, (the Pacific NorthWest is confused) we are seeing lots of little animals, both alive and dead.
Particularly right outside of our sliding glass door.
One day I glanced over and there was a dead mouse. He looked rather sweet and innocent. I figured he’d just died of natural causes near my back door. I had one of the kids dispose of him.
After the third of fourth time, I wondered why all of the mice were coming to my back door to die. None of them showed signs of trauma, so I figured they’d just died of natural causes. Dave laid lots of poison when we found the bathroom mouse’s entrance. I figured that this was a new batch of mice who didn’t know about the dangers of poison. We had hopefully killed off all of the older wiser mice, and they didn’t know that the yummy smelling green chunks near the entrance to our house was lethal. I don’t know why I insist on anthropomorphizing the mice around our house, but I now imagine them all living in a Lord of the Flies like colony longing for Mommy mice.
I never once thought it was Frank bringing me trophies. That is until I turned around one day and he had a wiggling little mouse in his mouth. I screamed and slammed the sliding door shut. I then decided that I should encourage this behavior, so I cracked the door and said, “ooo you are such a good kitty Frank! Great Job! What a good killer you are!” And then I shut the door and closed the curtains.
I probably shouldn’t have encouraged him.
He’s brought me a bunny. Yes, my cat is a freaking ninja! I have no idea how he was able to catch a rather large bunny (not our guardian bunny, he’s still there). He has super stalker skills.
He brought me a bird and McKayla renamed him “Bird Killer” and refuses to even sit near Frank now.
Today, while I was out, I received this text from McKayla.
I called Dave who assured me his was too busy to come and eradicate our house from a mole. I called McKayla to see if maybe he’d escaped outside.
Her: I don’t know. I’m pretending that it doesn’t exist.
Me: That’s a terrible plan. You need to watch it to make sure it doesn’t escape IN the house.
Her: Don’t worry, Mike’s on it.
When I came home I found Mike in the living room wearing rain boots and armed with a broom. All of the furniture was moved and Frank was patiently watching the bookcase.
Even though I had photographic evidence of the so called mole, I still was imagining a much larger animal. So when the kids told me that the mole was behind the book case I couldn’t quite visualize it. I was worried he be stuck back there. He’d die of dehydration and we’d have to move all of the books and bookcases. The work this little thing was creating.
Then he would peep his little head out and Frank would pounce. He’d retreat and Frank would resume patiently waiting with his tail wagging.
I had an ingenious idea to remove Frank so the mole would have an opportunity to escape and we could guide him outside to die among his friends (This was less of a “lord of the flies” scenario and more “Wind in the Willows” Poor sweet mole. I could imagine the small but well attended funeral. We readied ourselves with brooms and sticks. I picked up Frank. The mole escaped. I screamed and threw Frank in the general direction of the mole (which was the size of a mouse).
Frank played a lot of catch and release, which caused lots of screaming and jumping on furniture (by me). Eventually the mole ended up under the coach. We moved the coach. The mole faked a right and went left into the office. Frank totally fell for it.
Mike and I immediately quarantined him in the closet and had Nate bring Killer (aka Frank) to us. We blocked the space underneath the door with a serious of cleverly placed books. We started emptying the bottom of the closet using a broom. Let me tell you it was no easy feat. Every time something would move, I’d jump and scream. The whole time Frank was meowing at the door indignantly. He was over the whole thing. Finally we found the mole and with a nice whack of the broom he ceased to scurry any longer. There he lays under a frosting container and a nice fat optics manual for good measure awaiting Dave to come home and dispose of him.
Now that the trauma is behind me and he’s safely underneath 10lbs of paper and after some internet research, I’m pretty sure our mole was really a shrew. If I would have known that our little shrew may have venom potent enough to kill 200 mice I would have saved him and trained him to become “THE MOUSE KILLER!” complete with super hero cape and mask. It would have been epic.
Overactiveovaries 