screaming till my throat hurts

It all started on Thursday.

I woke up in the morning to find that my dog, Lucy, (who doesn't like to go potty outside when its raining) had pee'd on the floor again. Ugh! However, in finding the pee (right next to the doggy door!) I was confused as to why the dog door cover was lying askew on the floor and her crate was all cockeyed crooked, and that when I did finally let her back in the house after kicking her out, she was sniffing all around the edge of the dryer which is right next to her dog door, and which is where her dog door cover is usually stashed when the dog door is "open". I thought that odd, and I peaked back there but didn't see anything.

Then I started finding what I hoped were not (but actually knew they were) mouse droppings in the house. In the entryway tile, in the kitchen, in the pantry. So for about a day I sort of pretended we didn't have a mouse, because I really didn't want one. I also was reminded of that Friends episode where Phoebe lets the mouse live in her apt and sets out food for it and it does not harm anything. I'm thinking, maybe its not really here, and if it is , its so tiny it can't do much harm, right? (WRONG).

Friday Lucy goes to the vet all day for shots and a teeth cleaning, when I pick her up and bring her home she starts going nuts sniffing along all the bottom edges of the kitchen cabinets. (You do know there is a gap between the kickboard and the cabinets, right?) So I KNOW that would be a good mouse hiding place, and based on Lucy's behavior I KNOW its in there. (Plus I had just picked up some more mouse turds off the kitchen floor, so it had to be near!)

Well, Dan is out of town (hunting in KS) and I do not want to have this mouse get out of control, and I am getting more anxious by the moment. So that evening I head out and buy some mouse traps. However, I don't really want to deal with the snap kind, so I buy these super sticky things. (Not realizing that if it catches the mouse, it will still be alive and THEN what will I do?!)

Anyway, set them out along the base boards and one in the pantry that night. No luck. Saturday morning I load the dishwasher , turn it on and head upstairs to do some work. I come down later because something the girls and I are baking is ready and I find the floor covered in water. The dishwasher (which is only 2years old!) is leaking all over the floor and its leaked through the back of the cabinet into the carpet in the living room-GGRRRR! What's the deal???!!!! Of course Dan is still gone and I'm thinking this is just great (of course that was sarcasm). So... clean it up, turn it off, can't pull it out to look behind it so leave a msg on Dan's phone telling him we have a dishwasher problem now too(last night I left him a msg about our mouse problem).
Still no mice in our traps either.
Well, Dan comes home that evening and he pulls off the kickboard on the washer and lo' and behold, what do we find????? That stupid mouse has chewed TWO HOLES in the plastic tub of the dishwasher. Reason for leak ... found!! GGRRRRR!

Go to store, buy more mouse traps. This time the kind that SNAP!

Set them out, one in the pantry, one under the dishwasher (I don't want to set them out in the open because I don't want Lucy to set them off sniffing the peanut butter).
I go to sleep dreaming about getting that mouse. All the while hoping it is just one, and that it gets caught asap. I don't even want to get a new dishwasher or get it fixed till he's gone because I don't want him to chew thru the fixed one!

First thing Dan and I both do when we wake up is check the traps. No luck.
Then I notice Lucy is sniffing at the couch. So I go and check it out. Our couch is a sectional that latches all together, so its not movable by one person and its actually a pain(I'll never buy another sectional-too hard to clean underneath it, which I didn't realize when I bought it). But I peer behind it and I don't see much, except one of T's magazines has fallen back there so I reach in and pull it out. Only to see that its been chewed through and there is poop on the carpet right next to the couch, and the light cord that runs back there is semi-chewed through too. AND the dog is still going nuts sniffing at the couch!

So... I get another snap trap and set it (this does take awhile because I don't know what I'm doing-I even had to go look at the ones Dan had set so I could figure it out ha ha). Anyway, I set it and put it behind the couch where I found the magazine and poop. We then put the dog outside and leave for church.

We come home and check all the traps they are all empty... except the one behind the couch is flipped over and appears to have a mouse in it. We pull it out only to find no mouse! Crud! We were very excited, only to be let down...how could he have gotten out?! Those things snap so quickly and so hard it should have certainly caught him!

Well, Dan decides we better pull the couch out and see whats under it...he starts to pull out the other end and "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", T and I scream as we see a HUGE, and I mean HHHHUUUUUGGGGEEEEEE field mouse laying there dead. Ick, gives me the shivers just thinking about it. Yuck! However, Hooray for it being DEAD! :)

I was expecting to find little 1-2 inch long tiny mice. NOT a giant goliath that was at least 6 inches long! Dan teased me that I was scared of it running across my face while sleeping, which I really wasn't because I figured it was so tiny and probably was just in the kitchen. Little did I know that it was this HUGE MONSTROSITY that would have suffocated me if it had run across my face at night-ick!

The only thing we can think (since we set out no poison) is that he got hit in the head when it snapped and he was so big he didn't really fit in it, so he ran off as far as he could but his head injury was fatal (ha ha) and he died six feet away from where he was struck in the head by the trap.

All the other traps are still set, but I truly hope that it was the only one and we are done with this fiasco.

Looking back, I think it must have come in the dog door Thursday night and maybe Lucy had chased it a bit and that's why her door and crate were all askew and why she was sniffing behind the dryer, because she had chased it back there. Then it moved into the kitchen where she sniffed it and it made itself a bit of a bed under our couch. Hopefully this is the end of this story. However, I DO need to call a repairman and find out how much it will cost to fix the dishwasher, or if its almost better to just buy a new one. The thing that stinks is that this one IS a new one (I had it installed exactly 2 years ago, so it really stinks that its now broken) Can I say "UGH" just one more time?... UGH!

The only positive thing (except that the mouse is dead) is that T and I did the dishes together last night, and it was really fun. Reminded me of doing the dishes every night with my brother when we were growing up. Anyway, I hope this is the end to my mouse story. Oh, by the way, the title is true, because my throat is now killing me after screaming my head off when we found it. (I consoled myself with a nice cool coconut popsicle-kinda like tonsilitis right?) :)