Ok, for those of you that remain, I am going to tell you a creepy little tale of what has been happening in our house lately.
About a week or so ago, in the middle of the night I kept hearing a noise. To me it really sounded like a bird flapping wings or something of that nature, and it seemed to be coming from our kitchen. I tiptoed in there and listened carefully, but couldn't see anything, couldn't pinpoint the location of the noise, and couldn't really figure out what to do about it. So I woke up Steven.
The two of us stood and stared at the kitchen wall for a few minutes. He also heard the noise and we wondered if it was coming from down in the basement and we could simply hear it through the vents. So off we went downstairs into the creepy, dirty, unfinished, did I mention creepy? basement (Steven first of course).
We saw nothing (side note: about a month previous to this disturbance Steven and the boys found a bat in the basement!! I was, very fortunately, out of the house that evening and never had to see or experience the vile little creature... sorry I'm not a fan of the bat unless it's made of wood and held by a professional baseball player.)
So we gave up and went to bed. The next day, while Steven was at work I started to clean up the kitchen and while sweeping the floors I found, shall we say *evidence* that a mouse had been cruising our kitchen area. I therefore sensed that I should open the stove drawer and look at the glue traps that we have hanging out down there. We had caught one mouse in the drawer several months ago and I decided that I couldn't really bring myself to use that drawer for storage, maybe ever again, so I determined it would now become our continuous (out of sight, out of mind) mouse trap. And the idea worked perfectly because, yes, there was yet another mouse stuck to a trap. Case closed. Noise the previous night was the mouse that is now stuck to the yucky trap. *shiver*
So because I watched Verminators on the Discovery channel on-line, I am now a critter exterminating expert and know that when you remove a mouse from a trap you should really kinda leave things as they are because it will attract more mice to come join the party, so to speak. So once again we left glue traps in drawer and forgot about it.
Until last night.
Last night I was once again awakened by a really strange sound. The kids had their plastic easter eggs all over the floor in our school room and I kept thinking I heard *something* messing with the plastic eggs. I got up to investigate once again, and in my drowsy state and influenced by the darkened room I dreamed up the idea that the culprit must be something bigger than a mouse... and it scared me. So I woke up Steven, again.
We went together to the school room and I irrationally explained my irrational idea that there is a critter playing with the kids' easter eggs. I heard it. It's a fact. So Steven patiently helped me pick up all the eggs, put them in the basket on the table and then we stood there and listened to silence for a few seconds before we both determined that I was a crazy nut and went back to bed. Except when I went back to bed I kept hearing the strange noise. So I turned on the radio and went to sleep. eventually.
Fast forward to this evening. I'd pretty much been out of the house all day since early this morning and by the time I remembered my middle of the night mouse hunt (or worse) it was evening and all the kids were in the kitchen with me while Steven was in one of the back bedrooms. I thought, "hey, the last time I thought I heard something in the night it turned out to be a mouse and that mouse ended up stuck in my stove drawer... hmmm... I wonder..."
So I opened the drawer...
They say a picture is worth a thousand words...
Yes, yes, you are not seeing things, and unfortunately I wasn't either. This Prairie Kingsnake, as I've been told it is called, has been living in my house!!! and because of it's love for everything mousy it got itself adhered to not only the glue traps but also to my stove drawer! (Aha, plastic clicking sounds were not the easter eggs but were instead the snake wrestling with the glue traps in my stove drawer... why me?)
I called Steven (I really didn't freak out) and told him to come and see what I had. Yes, it was still alive, although looking pretty pathetic all gooed up.
Steven took the whole drawer outside and pulled the poor (why am I calling it "poor"??) thing off the drawer and laid him in the yard. The thing will have to be dead by morning I'm sure, it was totally covered with that goo!
Anyway, Isaiah freaked. Huston didn't even look. Avery didn't care and Lillie kept squatting down next to it saying, "nake. nake." with a big grin on her face. Guess I'll wake her up next time and maybe she can help me wrangle the stupid critters that think my house is more comfortable than the great outdoors. Sheesh.
Phew. That is the creepy tale I have to tell and I very much hoping it's the last one to share for a long, long time.
1 comment:
Oh my. I have to say, I think you handled that a lot better than I would have. You even managed to take a picture! I, on the other hand, would have left the room, never to return. :)
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