eek!

There is a mouse currently residing somewhere in my kitchen. Hubby saw it a while ago and told me about it, and I determined that he was crazy because weeks went by without so much as a peep from the critter. He even thought he was crazy and imagined it.

No such luck. I was coming up from the basement and saw it scurry across the counter top (the very one we use for cooking! Ick!). It ran behind the TV we have in the corner (yes we are junkies) and disappeared. Then last night my lovely daughter woke up at 12:45 to eat and as I sat down with her on the couch I saw it make a u-turn at the threshold of the kitchen and the living room and beeline back into the kitchen *shudder*.

I woke hubby up and told him he was to go to the store after work and buy a trap. A humane one, of course, not a glue trap - he'll never make that mistake again. In college his roommate bought a glue trap and got the mouse - problem solved! Oh, until he realized it's feet are permanently stuck to the trap and it's alive and was faced with the decision of letting it gnaw its own feet off or killing it (which he did with a rock).

There hasn't been any confrontation between my greyhound and the mouse that I know about, and I'm hoping it stays this way. I do not want to come home to a bloody pulp in the guest bed (aka greyhound's bed) (aka her kitchen). I do not, however, worry much about this because 1. the mouse is small and fast and can hide and 2. my hound is getting old and extremely unmotivated unless cheese is involved.

We need to strategically place the trap however in a place unseen by the hound. I have visions of her finding the mouse in a trap 1. being bothered all day by it and 2. doing unsavory things to the trap in order to get at said mouse.

It took plenty of courage for me to go into the kitchen this morning to get my lunch ready and use the neti pot (cannot go a day without this miracle worker). I could see myself leaning over the sink with water (and snot) running out of my nose and being scared half to death by a mouse that I rationally know won't bother me and is more scared of me than I am of it but of which I am irrationally scared shitless.

Oh joy, the wonders of home ownership. Why can't I have a dog that will catch small animals and dispose of them properly instead of wounding them enough to put them out of commission and die a slow, painful death?