Hey, I’m gonna get you, too

Another day, another mouse trapped beneath the planet of the dishwasher. One wrinkle: Tina heard it snap in the afternoon but refused to look.

Thomas and Tina cleaned out his room on Monday, including removing the large candy stockpile underneath his bed. He is glad that he has no more mice in his room but upset that mice have to die for his freedom.

Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: 596 miles
Weight lost: 49 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 9
Hours billed last week: 39.5
Current reading: The Prince by Machiavelli, Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke, 2107 Curious Word Origins, Says & Expressions by Charles Earle Funk
Recent listening: Two Lane Highway by Pure Prairie League, Infected by The The, Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull, Necktie Second by Pete Droge
Recent viewing: The Daily Show, Wisconsin at Iowa, Suns at Bucks, Suns at Cavaliers, Classic Albums: Nevermind, Countdown
Recent playing: Bust-A-Move
Recently accomplished: Dropped van at mechanic, mouse hunting, bike maintenance, new tubes and tire for bike, cardboard recycling, Sunday dinner (hot dogs & sweet potato fries), cleaned and disinfected CPAP parts, paid bills
Imperative To Do: RMA old Tivo drive, vacuum van carpet
Cool Link: The CIA and Saddam Hussein: A Short History by Juan Cole

Another one bites the dust

I re-baited the traps with peanut butter yesterday and changed the location of a couple. This morning we caught two more: one in Thomas’ room and the other under the dishwasher. The one under the dishwasher was still alive and had dragged the trap to an inconvenient location for retrieval. I had to move it with the broom handle before I could get a hold of it. After I did I saw the tail twitch and then his legs started to move. Both the boys said they were horrified but couldn’t stop watching the little bugger running in midair as the trap held his crushed little head down. I dropped them both in the trash. I suppose I could have mercifully killed the live one, but after discussing it with Victor Saturday night, I was dissuaded by the prospect of splatter and ooze.

OK, I think that’s gross enough for the day!

Nothing can do me wrong

I burned MP3 CDs for Graham and Thomas shortly after Christmas so they both could have some new music. For some reason, Graham has latched onto a song called “Helmet” by a capella band The Bobs. He listens to it over and over and has committed the words to memory. A couple of weeks ago he started basketball practice and is playing in his first game today. His skills were raw to start, but Tina has been practicing dribbling and passing with him everyday and he’s getting much better.

Thomas has been engrossed with finishing The Legend of Zelda on Wii. They’re not allowed to play Wii during the week, so he’s been playing Runescape, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing (MMOR) game, after finishing his homework every day. He listens to cello music in bed at night while he’s reading. Sometimes he listens to science podcasts while he’s trying to get to sleep.

When Jan and Tom were here over the holidays, Tom mounted our dishwasher to the counter to keep it from tipping forward when the door is open. While working on it, he found what he described as mouse droppings under the dishwasher. Since we had never seen mice or any sign of mice in our house, we didn’t really believe it. Then last week came into the family room asking who had been eating his two pound Hershey Bar. We took a look and it had a very small tear in it and a perfect semi-circle eaten out of one corner. With tiny little teeth marks.

That night we bought a bunch of cheap mouse traps (Does Victor have a patent on that design? They look exactly the same as the ones we used 30 years ago.) and one “live” trap because Thomas asked. One went off the first night but had no mouse. Today as I was making eggs for myself I glanced over at the one on the counter and found that it had a tiny little mouse in it. Graham initially volunteered to be “in charge” of emptying the traps but when faced with an actual dead mouse, he begged off. Our success led us to check the four other traps and found a larger mouse under the dishwasher.

When I was a kid, I was “in charge” of emptying the traps in our house. I was the only boy in the house at the time, so I suppose that’s why I drew the duty. I really disliked it especially when the trap on the heat register caught one. By the time I would find it in the morning, it was half-cooked and pretty disgusting. I don’t know where I was supposed to put the mice, but I always dropped them into the two-foot space between the house and back porch. I remember always trying to open the traps without touching the mice.