If You Give a Mouse a Cheez-it....

Going to take a break from all the serious posts today to fit in a little laugh. :)

One night at about 3:30am Jake and I were sound asleep in our hotel room when Jake’s half-eaten sack of Santitas tortilla chips made a little rustling sound. The chip sack was sitting right next to my head on top of our pile of empty suitcases that were stacked up. I heard the sound, but still half-asleep I told myself it must be the over-head fan causing the sack to move a little bit. I rolled over and fell back to sleep. Little did I know that the same sound had woken Jake up and there he lay, wide awake. About 30 seconds later my journal notebook which was also on top of the suitcases suddenly fell to the floor. Jake flew out of bed and turned on the lights screaming, “I just saw something scurry by your head!!!!! Something is in our room!!!” Half asleep I got out of bed and just looked at him wondering what he was going to do. “What do you think it is?” I asked. He said, “I don’t know, but I am not going to be able to go back to sleep until we get it out of here.”

So, we started moving the suitcases off the floor, one by one, knowing that whatever it was, it was under there. Finally, there was just one suitcase left to move. We held our breath as Jake picked it up…..and then…….there it was……..A MOUSE!!!! We both jumped on top of the bed and watched as the mouse scurried across the room and headed up the leg of the table desk. Immediately I knew we were in trouble. Jake is a city boy and hates mice. (In fact, this was not our first adventure together with a mouse in our house. We had this same scenario happen in college, when there was a mouse in our apartment kitchen. As soon as Jake saw it he ran into the bedroom and stuffed a towel under the door so it couldn’t get him. Meanwhile, I stuck our cat on the job and the rodent was done for in less than 5 minutes). But here we stood. Mr. Mernes (our cat) could not come to our rescue this time. I looked at Jake, handed him a shoe and said, “You gotta smash him. Otherwise, he’ll be back.” Jake looked at me and said, “I don’t think I can do it.” So, I grabbed another shoe and we both stood there trying to work up a courageous approach while the mouse waited for his destiny on the cheez-its box.

It was then that I realized we had quite the mouse buffet in our room with the cheez-its, peanut butter crackers, and tostitos chips. No wonder he liked us. Then I had a plan. The cheez-its box had a little flap opening where the mouse was positioned. If I could close him in there then I could carry him outside in the box and we wouldn’t have to smash him bare. Ever so carefully I used a broom I found in the hallway to catch him in the opening and shut the flap. We got a garbage sack and threw the cheez-it box in it and I carried it outside. I wanted to make sure the mouse was in the box so I did a little broom dance on it to knock him silly, and then I opened it up. Wouldn’t you know it. Lil stinker wasn’t in there. I returned to the room where Jake was on guard. I told him we had been defeated. “He’s still in here.”

There was no sign of the mouse on the desk which meant that he must have crawled behind the clothing cabinet when I had tried to maneuver him into the box. Lucky for us the cabinet was on rollers so we scooched it away from the wall and once again the mouse scurried up the desk table (I think what gives me the heebie geebies about mice is all the scurrying). And there he waited for us. Again. I think we heard him snickering.

Enter another episode of us chasing the mouse from here to there and trying to smash him with a shoe, with still no victory. After what had been about 30 minutes of mice Olympics Jake and I were about to lose our minds. That’s when I heard them. Angels in the hallway ~ two macho construction guys just getting back to their hotel room after a late night of working on site. WHAT PERFECT TIMING!!!! I recruited them for the mouse hunt and they excitedly joined in. But the mouse wasn’t through with us yet. And the macho construction guys turned out to be almost as jumpy as Jake and I!!!! The little critter dragged them from the desk,

to the bathroom,

to the bed,

And then back to his favorite spot, the desk. This time though, as he scurried up the leg of the desk Chris’ quick reaction time caught him between the back ledge and the wall. With the smash of the desk against the wall, the poor guy met his fate. Game over just like that.

Lesson learned. If you give a mouse a cheez-it, he’ll want a peanut butter cracker. If you give him a peanut butter cracker, he’ll want a Santitas tostito chip. If you give him a Santitas tostito chip he’ll wake you up when he gets the late night munchies. If he wakes you up when he gets the late night munchies, you’ll have to take part in mouse Olympics. If you take part in mouse Olympics you’ll realize you really aren’t as tough as you thought. When you realize you really aren’t as tough as you thought, you put on your common sense and decide that next time you better add mouse traps to the packing list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The end.