UPDATE

I found a humongous mouse trap at Wal-mart, brought it home to an eager Jared, who promptly perched a chunk of string cheese on it and strategically placed it below the oven (which is still pulled away from the wall) Last night while I could not sleep from an ill-timed coke I heard a loud snap! I ran to the kitchen, fired up my least dim flashlight (they're all almost dead ALL of the time) and peered into the rat's lair. The trap had snapped, the cheese was gone. But....no mouse in sight. He is probably laughing as he dies in the wall with the taste of his last good meal on his lips.

Pinewood Derby

Jared had three cars racing this year. The one he made for Ethan last year, the one he made for Ethan this year, and the one he made for Ike this year. Between the three he got 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Good job, Jared! Oh, and Ethan and Ike too.

The saga continues!

Okay. So Jared is BEYOND obsessed about this mouse. Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep he kept running into our bedroom to give me a play by play of the mouse eating the poison he had layed out for it. He was practically counting the bites! Then he was giving me stats on how long it would take for the poison to take action and where the mouse might go and what he might do during his last hours. I was trying to sleep. I could not concern myself.
Then, in the midst of my five hour nap today, he had the nerve to burst in and inform me that he has since learned that the mouse may go into our wall to die and this would stink! He was freaking out! I had to look at the clock at my bedside to be sure of what was happening. "You're home at 1:00......in the afternoon?" Jared NEVER comes home during the day. Never. If he has no money for lunch he will count out pennies for a convenient store hot dog. This guy hates to come home mid-day. This was unprecedented! I'm still groggily trying to make heads or tails of his presence and he is in the kitchen, power tools a-blazin'. He is removing parts of our dishwasher! He has got the oven pulled out into the center of the kitchen. I'm walking in, rubbing my eyes saying,"You came home for the mouse? You're home to check on your mouse?" He looks at me, the wild eyes are back and he says, very very seriously,"Liz, this is very important,I need you to buy a trap today. I don't want that mouse to die in our walls and stink!" Then he proceeds to tell me all the factoids about killing a rat that he has apparently learned from his friends...."Lance says they get drunk on this stuff and wander into strange places to die!" "Don says they can fit into a hole the width of a pencil!--a pencil Liz!" (He uses his hand to make a circle the size of a pencil tip just in case I'm not sure) I'm now realizing he has been talking about nothing but this mouse to everyone he knows for the past 24 hours. His poor friends/boss/co-workers. He's back to the trap now. "Liz, I really need you to buy this trap! Not the little flimsy ones. It has to be a really good trap!!" Okay babe, okay, I can do that, a trap, got it." He continues to stare at me with crazy eyes and is scaring me just a little. Then, he grabs all the convenience foods he can find in the pantry, and leaves. So now, I'm out to search for the world's best mouse trap. Hope Wal-mart has it cuz that's as much as I'm lookin'!

I smell a rat

If past posts haven't made you scared enough of my house, I now have a mouse in my kitchen. I knew it was there. At night I could sometimes hear sounds like my oven was turned on but it wasn't. You know that kind of sound it makes sometimes? Anyway. I had told Jared I thought there was a mouse but he seemed not too concerned.
Well, last night Jared was at the table eating soup, gearing up to cut out Ethan and Ike's pinewood derby cars (derby is tomorrow) and he suddenly yelled for me. I was upstairs getting kids to bed. He yelled, "Liz! I need you!" I came running down wondering if he had somehow managed this phrase while choking because Jared is a big choker and I have saved his life more than once. When I came into the kitchen he was holding a broom and was poised by the dishwasher with "crazy eyes." Crazy eyes are Jared's eyes only ten times bigger. He handed me a mop. He said, "We have a mouse!" No kidding.
He kept poking around the stove and dishwasher and mumbling things about the measurements of the cabinets, the height of the floorboards etc. As usual, he believes an error in his building could be blamed for "the little beggar" getting in. He really believes a house can be built so perfectly that it would never have bug, foundation, rodent or any other issues. I try to tell him this is Houston but he doesn't listen. I told him, "Honestly babe, the kids always leave the front door open. The mouse probably just waltzed on in, right past our blind cat, and made himself at home." He wasn't listening.
He proceeded to give me instructions on how to "wap!" the rat with my mop while he pushed it out of it's hiding place with the broom. This thought was almost more than I could bare. I don't do animals. At all. And this is not a sweet little pet, it is a disease-ridden varmint. I was trying to harness my chi and get myself ready for the filthy guy to come running out from under the oven. I was planning on closing my eyes, screaming, and just swatting anything and everything as hard as I could with the mop. But Jared could not seem to find where the rat had stowed away to. At this point, I was ready to just put out some poison, go to sleep, and not set foot in my kitchen until the culprit was dead and GONE. But Jared (he can be obsessed at times) decided we would do a rat watch. We turned off the lights, sat side by side facing our stove........and watched. He really believed this would be productive. I went along with it because I had nothing better to do, and it was kind of entertaining--watching Jared's wild eyes dart around the kitchen while he threw out countless theories as to how the mouse got there, how long he'd been there, and if he had any friends.
This went on for quite sometime with no results. Finally, I went to bed. I'm not sure what happened after that. This morning when I left early to take Harris to the doctor, there was no sign of the mouse or Jared. They were both in their hiding places asleep.