tom and jerry

Us: 3. maybe.
Them: about 6 and counting

I have frequent bouts of insomnia. It's been getting worse as I get older. I have, however, finally learned not to lie there in bed and work myself up into a state of panic over how much sleep I am not getting. I have made a tentative peace with Insomnia now, like a slightly irritating but mostly harmless friend.

So several weeks ago I was down in the office around the 3 am hour, killing time by researching how long to expect a stone bruise on the arch of your foot to last (Look, the point is to Bore myself, isn't it?!) when I heard that dreaded skittering above my head. Dammit. I attempted to pretend it wasn't there for a night or two but the damn thing was persistent. So I finally fessed up and told DH that we had something(s) living in our attic.

To make a long boring story short, we have run the gamot of various styles of live-catch traps. We did finally catch, quite possibly, the same mouse three times. I mean, how much can little field mice look alike? Do they all have the little ears laid back on their heads and the long tails? Really? I wasn't springing it free all that far from the house. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I was recapturing the same Mystery Rodent. And now the little rodent(s) has figured out it can chew through plastic, rendering our nifty live-catch mouse trap useless. Thankless little beast. Does it WANT to be tortured unmercilessly by being stuck to glue traps or snapped up into bits? We're trying to do the humane thing here and release the little guy out into its natural habitat where it can be chomped down for dinner by a black snake like it should be.

Before that, though, if it were to only remain outside, it would have the amazing opportunity to discover and dine upon a delicious pork roast, compete with golden potatoes and carrots and mushroom and onion soup, all red and raw and nestled in our garbage.

Guess who forgot to plug in the crock pot this morning?

So there's my afternoon for you. I'm sparing you the details of the tears and the wails and the gnashing of teeth and the torture that my dear darling daughter went through at the mere suggestion that our live-catch attempts were not working and maybe we'd have to try other methods on our Mysterious Rodent guest. Oh my. You see, she LOVES ANIMALS! She has a BOND with them! She cannot, MUST NOT see them hurt! EVER!

So I guess Mysterious Rodent has a repreive for a few days until we find a non-chewable live-catch trap. And if I accidentally let Sammy the cat up into the attic? Well. I wouldn't do that on purpose of course.