Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Live from The Panic Room

Last week...I thought I saw *something* scurry across the floor and under my desk in our family room.  I screamed, jumped into my chair and called my husband on my iPhone. He wasn't happy to be woken up at 5am to come downstairs and investigate.

We found nothing....

The next day, hubby was working late in his office and he heard noises.  Like the thump of a dogs tail.  We don't have a dog.....

The next morning was chilly and the heat kicked on and a couple pieces of insulation with wood chips in it came up through the kitchen vent.  I freaked out a little because I had just started reading My Fair Lazy and Jen had a RAT in her house! I tucked my pants into my socks.....


 That night at dinner, Calvin told me that he had heard noises and I told him about the insulation so I made him call Justin our pest guy. Justin told Calvin about an animal super highway and that sometimes they aren't living in your house they are just passing through.

I'm now picturing a maze of roads running under my house...filled with little varmints. Two things....1.) not a good idea to tell your terrified wife what the pest guy says and 2.) ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS?

I die!

Over the weekend...I found a small amount of stuffing by the stairs that go to the basement. I showed it to Calvin and he said it was from a stuffed animal and I said I was suspicious that it is from our little *friend*. On Sunday night, I saw a small amount more on the couch where I spent the entire day in my PJs because it was my day.

Yesterday, the kids were building an ark playing nicely in Alex room so I plopped down on the couch to watch Army Wives and when I did a cloud of stuffing flew high into the air.  It was like a scene from a movie! I jumped up and thought what the heck is all of this from...and I slowly removed the couch cushion.

OH MY HELL!



I immediately called Calvin and told him what I'd found and that it was LIVING IN MY COUCH!! I also told him that he needed to come home and take this couch out of my house.  He didn't not find that this was an emergency so I gathered up the children, my iPad, iPhone, a cooler full of snacks and I sought out the sanctuary of my bedroom.

The Panic Room!

We stayed in the Panic Room for 5 hours until Calvin decided to come home and remove the couch (and creature) from the house. I watched as he pushed it into the garage and nothing came out...except for Vivienne's Christmas Card.

I rearranged the furniture and tried to get comfortable in a new spot (since my old spot is now in the garage) and felt a little like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. And that's when it happened.  The mouse ran across the family room from the love seat I was sitting on...to the entertainment center!

I jumped up on the back of the couch and screamed!  WHAT THE HELL! Calvin went to the basement to retrieve the trap that Justin had left and placed it near the furniture.  We spent the next two hours speculating what it was doing and where it was building it's nest.

Calvin thinks it's pregnant.

This morning...I'm reluctantly sitting at my desk in the family room and resisting the urge to retreat to The Panic Room.  Calvin tells me that mice are nocturnal and won't be wandering the house during the day light.

I've named the mouse....Victoria. (twilight reference there in case you didn't catch it)

Also...in the not at all helpful category...Calvin told me a story about Kangaroo Mice and one that ran up his sleeping bag and he demonstrated ON ME with his hand. Try to sleep after that....

If you need me...I'll be in the Panic Room with my iPad and my stack of magazines.  And some Sprite.  And that's all I need.  Well, maybe some jello. 


This is also were I will be while I recuperate from my wisdom teeth being removed.

30 comments:

  1. OH, I would definitely be freaking out. I found a dead mouse in side my washing machine once (that I'd apparantly washed in my load of towels. When I discovered it, I slammed the lid and refused to go into the laundry room until J. removed it. And that one wasn't even alive!

    Hope you catch it. And by "you" I mean anyone other than you.

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  2. I would be freaking too! This had me cracking up... the tucked in socks check~ I WOULD DO! the panick room check~ I WOULD DO! the screaming and saying what the HELL! check~ I WOULD DO!! calling my hubs and demanding rodent removal...CHECK I WOULD DO! hope Victoria... gets kicked out for good. SORRY ABOUT YOUR COUCH... that stinks. Jenn

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  3. I think I would leave the house until hubby got home to remove Victoria. Shopping, library, diner, anywhere besides the house. I hate mi-dead or live ones.

    Good luck!-Lisa

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  4. I don't think I'd be able to stay in the house until the mouse was gone! You're brave to stay! I hope Victoria leaves quickly.

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  5. We have scorpions. I can't decide what i'd rather have......

    UH NEITHER!!!!!! Why the heck do we have to live with nasty creatures like this anyways???????

    At least you have your iPad in your Panic Room, so you'll get this comment.....

    ~Becca

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  6. Yikes! The picture of the couch freaked me out! I cannot believe it's been living in there.

    Hope you catch it soon!

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  7. THAT is exactly why i share my home with cats.
    at one time ... there WERE mice that decided to visit. they never got a chance to leave. and yet, when i found their dead bodies ... i still put giant clear dishes over the top with GIGANTIC books on top. because they might come alive. and i needed to be able to see them ... and i needed them to be trapped so that my dad could dispose of them.
    because my husband is never home. and my dad is always willing to drive to save me.

    i love my dad.

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  8. Oh my goodness I'm freaking out here just FOR you! GAH!!!! We had a little one once that made it's nest in the papers that had fallen behind my desk. MY DESK. It ran in past my feet and I teleported to the dining room table - where I stayed until my husband caught & disposed of it. Thankfully that was only an hour ordeal. I can't IMAGINE living with one in the house and KNOWING IT. Again I say GAH!!

    Rhoni@ckybooks
    http://www.ckybooks.com

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  9. Ugh!! I used to imagine them as little mice families, living in the knot hole in the base board, with little matchbox furniture and Mommy Mice wearing aprons.

    Then I had some in my house. Not cute, not charming, Not good. They went from cute to vermin in less than a day.

    Calvin needs to be more sympathetic to the Ick Factor you have AND he needs to get you a new couch. (But I am touched you, um, saved my Christmas card. Ha!)

    (Another Twilight connection? Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room was played by Kristen Stewart...)

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  10. Oh my goodness, I am laughing so hard right now! Not because I think it's funny because I have the heebie geebie's just reading about mice, but because I would be EXACTLY how you are right now! And I LOVE that you named it Victoria LOL. Hope you get rid of it soon, and hope there is only one! Keep us updated.

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  11. Holy Heck! Vivienne is right! Kristen Stewart plays the little boy in Panic Room!

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  12. that is completely creepy. That Mouse was messing with your head!!!!!!!

    However. Completely funny story.


    We have a cat, our cat is even declawed, and I am pretty sure that keeps the mice away still. She would get them with your back claws, I have complete faith in her (because she gets me with those back ones). Plus she either sleeps at my feet or on the floor on my side of the bed. She's my protecter. Plus she eats bugs. Can't get any better than that, because I don't like bugs.

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  13. ewwww ewwww ewwwww ewwwww icky yucky icky ewww ewww ewww....thats all I got!

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  14. Since Calvin isn't playing nicely and doing more to remove Victoria, Cindy said he dad could come out and help. Remember, he is the Mouse Hunter of Northern Utah!

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  15. FREAKY!! I really hope this is solved for you soon!!! We had issues with mice in the house we are selling. It is located in an urban setting so rats, etc. were just part of the deal. One person puts out traps so they just move on to the next house. The first time I saw a mouse in my house - I WAS READY TO MOVE!!! TOTALLY freaked me out. Our renters saw one a few years later ... having them tell the story was hilarious but only b/c I remembered how awful it was when it was me doing the screaming!!!

    Here's to ending the animal superhighway in your house!!!! :o)))))

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  16. Oh, I am laughing...not at you, of course. I'm only laughing at the situation. My mom is freakin terrified of rodents. I am not. I don't like them...and I definitley don't want them to create a superhighway in my house, but they don't send me to the panic room. Spiders on the other hand, now that's a different story.

    I hope Victoria is done away with soon...rip her apart and burn the pieces. Call Edward if you need to...that could be a multi-purpose visit.

    Sorry you have to get your wisdom teeth removed. Hope all goes well. Let me know how bad it is...I have one that's impacted and they want to cut it out. Freaks me out.

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  17. Oh dear! I am so sorry. Mice are from the devil and since we live in the country, at times I've felt like I'm living in hell!

    I'm finally breaking down & calling pest control b/c we have everything under the sun: wasps, mice, black widows, regular spiders, and these tiny sand fleas {not regular fleas} that are LITERALLY invading our home.

    On top of opposums and raccoons. If only I was joking.

    True mice story: {okay 2} When I was a teenager, my bff & I were doing our regular Fri night ritual of watching TGI Friday in my living room. I went to our trash compactor to throw something away, and the mouse JUMPED out at me!!!

    2nd story: I was sleeping on our couch shortly after Maddison was born b/c I'd been living in one of our rooms in the basement. A mouse was trapped.in.the.wall. I could hear it jumping and jumping. Well, eventually it quit jumping b/c well...it died in there. And it was nasty stinky!! And that's not even the point of this story. I was sleeping on the couch upstairs, and in the middle of the night, felt something. It was a MOUSE!!! Coming up from the cushions in the couch. Oh my gosh, I jumped so fast! Needless to say, I didn't sleep much the rest of the night.

    See? Mice are from the devil.

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  18. One last thing to complete my novel: you can buy these cool traps that are a round black box. You set them, and once the opening has turned & is closed, you know there is a mouse in there, and all you do is toss it. You don't have to see a thing.

    But if you want fast action, the nasty old snap traps work the best, and definitely fastest. Then you have to see it though. Ew ew ew ew.

    {Sorry for those heeby jeebies}

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  19. Put some peanut butter on the trap and put it where you've seen the mouse. But it does sound like it is building a nest so I would keep the traps out after you catch it.

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  20. holy crap I hate mice. when I was in college, we had one in our dorm room. guess who was home by herself when she heard the trap snap in the living room? and guess who called her dad in hysterics to come take care of it? yeah, tramatized ever since.

    good luck!!!

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  21. Put the mouse trap in a brown bag from the grocery store or a lunch bag. That way it'll be easy peasy to toss the carcass.

    Best of luck with this one...

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  22. oh.my.goodness i have had a super similar experience except the night the nasty (giant) thing entered my house i was there! and saw it! and thought i could use electrical tape to keep it out... THEN i found it inside our entertainment center with a sh!t ton of dog food it had stolen from our puppies bowls!! i didn't sleep for a month that winter... but when i finally captured that nasty giant thing (which totally turned out to be rat) i felt completely liberated. and was no longer grouchy from lack of sleep... i've got pics if you're itnerested ;)

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  23. Too scary! We have a mouse living in our deck box...fortunately it is outside. But it scared the crud out of me last week when I went to get Hannah's t-ball mitt. Mickey said it looks like it made a nest in one of his shoes he had in there, but he is even too chicken to get it out. But the thinks it is gone. I kick the deck box a few times before I even think about opening it. Mice are tiny, evil creatures.

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  24. I would lose my mind. Did you call the exterminator? My mom tells a story about catching a mouse in a trap in their first house and then discovering the nest of newborns. Apparently it was a tearful affair with bucketloads of guilt. But what can you do? It's not a Disney movie...although my memories of The Secret of Nimh do give me pause...

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  25. Oh my hell, I am now reliving one of the more horrifying experiences of my life - FLASHBACK!!! I swear, that same thing happened to us when we moved here 7 years ago. We'd just moved in (October 2002) and had been in the house a few weeks. We'd seen some mouse activity in the garage, but were going to Houston for Thanksgiving to visit family. Left, knowing there were mice in the garage and basement...came home after the weekend, got Evie to bed, sitting on the couch watching TV when a mouse RAN FROM UNDER THE COUCH TO THE ENTERTAINMENT CENTER!!! I died. Well, screamed. I HATE MICE! We did get that little bugger (it was just the one in the living area) and the cat and glue traps took care of the rest, but every now and then one would still get in, behind the kitchen cabinets (we'd duct taped everything we could and put glue traps behind the kick plate). Finally, when Jason was a newborn, I heard one in the laundry room wall. That was it, we've had pest control ever since. There are locked bait boxes around the outside of the house now & we haven't had a problem since. Thank GOD! It's such a violating feeling to have those dirty creatures LIVING in your stuff, pooping and peeing everywhere :( They have no manners.

    Ok, rant done :) Hope you get them!!!!

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  26. That just creeps me out and makes me sit here on the couch and life my feet up.

    Hope your surgery goes well and you enjoy your down time!!!

    Be thinking of you!

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  27. Okay, where have I been?? First of all, AGGHHHHH! I hate mice. Hate them. At one time I thought "Oh, little mice. So cute." Yeah, then we shared a home with them, and not so much! One night when Jeremy was at work, a mouse jumped out of the high chair {insert scream}, and I called my dad to come over {this was before they lived right next door}. He drove 30 minutes to come catch the darn thing.

    Then, just as we thought we were rid of them, one chewed through tubing on our dishwasher {can you say major leak}, another one crawled behind our oven {and died. Nice.}, and yet another made its way into our heat ducting. They are a NUISANCE!

    I feel ya.

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