The mousy took a nap after his lunch of peanut butter

As many of you know, Back Seat Girl and I are visiting my parents in beautiful Wisconsin while Driver is at training for work in Washington, D.C. We’ve been here since Sunday afternoon, and though it’s been a very nice visit, so far, it’s also been very uneventful. That is, until today.

This morning I was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel after my shower, when I heard my mother let out a little scream from the laundry room. I opened the door and peaked my head out to make sure nothing horrible had happened to Back Seat Girl, and my mom informed me that a mouse had just run out of the laundry room and down the hallway toward the living room. A little while later, while mom and Back Seat Girl were in the living room, it reappeared in the corner. My mom did what every other clear-thinking woman would do with her precious granddaughter in the house. She picked up Back Seat Girl, set her in the rocking chair, and starting whacking at the mouse with a broom. Back Seat Girl sat in her chair and laughed out loud.

A little while later, I was in the living room, deciding that I needed to go outside and start cleaning out the wagon and re-packing it for our trip home tonight, when the mouse very boldly ran across the living room and into the kitchen. Back Seat Girl was on my mom’s lap watching Lady and the Tramp. So, now I had to pick up the broom and chase after it. Back Seat Girl was starting to get nervous. She would no longer go and play with her toys in the corner because that was the last place we had seen it. It was becoming obvious that we needed to do something about this bold mouse that refused to go back into the basement and hang out until my dad got home and could take care of it. I told my mom to try not to freak out when she saw the mouse so we wouldn’t scare Back Seat Girl. These words had not been out of my mouth for more than 30 seconds before the mouse ran out of the corner by the TV, past us, and behind the couch. I screamed like a girl.

My mom and I both put shoes and socks on, because everyone knows how vicious house mice are. Also, it would obviously help us catch the mouse. I put a sticky trap with peanut butter in the corner of the kitchen where I had seen the mouse run several times. We hoped that it would run in there and chow down and we could just throw the whole trap outside and just forget about it until dad got home. Back Seat Girl was with me when I did this, so she thought we were feeding the mouse by putting peanut butter into its house. Children are so innocent.

It soon became obvious that the mouse was not going to just run into its “house” and enjoy it’s lunch of peanut butter. Back Seat Girl had decided she wanted to sit on mommy’s lap to watch her movie, so now my mom was armed with the broom. We started to get a little whippy. I don’t know if it was the fear, or watching my mom run around the house with a broom, whacking at the floor every time the mouse appeared, but we couldn’t stop laughing. Every time Back Seat Girl saw the mouse she started hitting her leg, and neither mom nor I would sit on a piece of furniture without our feet up on something.

We didn’t like the thought of putting Back Seat Girl going down for a nap with the mouse still on the loose, so my mom got a bucket and went down the hall to do some mouse hunting. When she got to her room she looked in to see the mouse sitting ON HER BED. Now mom was pissed. This meant war. At this point I was getting Back Seat Girl’s lunch ready. I heard a bunch of commotion at the end of the hallway, but I decided to just ignore it, until my mom started yelling for me to come and help her. She had the mouse’s back leg caught in the bucket, but the rest of him was hanging out. Here is where my true character came out. Mom handed me the broom to finish the job, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t whack the mouse. So, I put my foot on the bucket, turned my back and plugged my ears, and my mom starting whacking the mouse with the broom. It valiantly escaped from under the bucket, and I was instructed to close the door to the laundry room, or as I like to refer to it now, “The Arena of Death”. Behind the closed door I heard multiple whacks. When they stopped, I slowly opened the door, but my mom wasn’t finished. “It won’t stop moving!”, she said breathlessly, and kept on whacking. This is where I lost it. I crumpled into a heap in the hallway and started laughing until tears streamed down my face. “I broke the broom!”, my mom called out. Gales of laughter peeled out of me. I had never seen her like this. She was like a woman possessed. When the mouse finally gave up the ghost, mom swept it down the hallway, out the back door, and underneath the deck. Back Seat Girl turned around in her chair. “Mousy?”, she asked. “The mousy went outside for a nap”, I said.

I just hope that this isn’t the beginning of the end for mom. They say serial killers start out by torturing animals. I’ll have to have dad keep an eye on her…