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Oh geeze guys... My mother woke me up from a dead sleep because one of our cats brought a mouse into her bed. This has happened before but never quite like this before. This time... it was, it was alive! It burrowed underneath her pillows and on top of her closed laptop. Having had some experience with animals, mostly washing dogs, I didn't want to get too close if not only for fear that it might try to bite me. I don't necessarily mind getting bitten mind you but given that this was a wild animal, I figured there was a chance that it had rabies so I didn't want to chance it.

So not yet knowing whether it was dead or alive quite yet, I went and got a mop so I could maybe try to poke and prod the pillow it was underneath and sure enough, wouldn't it just be my luck it moved. The tail just slipped right underneath, looking almost as if I'd disturbed its beauty sleep and it was trying to move in deeper for comfort.

As cozy as it probably was, I couldn't necessarily just let it just sleep there all night 'lest I want to risk it getting into other parts of the house and having a problem later on. Discontent with the mop handle, I went to fetch one of those long arm grabber things, you know the sort that can pinch so you can grab stuff without bending over....

I grabbed the pillow and dragged it and much to my astonishment.... I saw no mouse. That didn't last for long as it brushed across the blanket, once again disturbing it's resting place, to the spot where the mouse was sleeping. It made a sudden movement that had me almost shrieking. It proceeded to jump off my mother's bed, landed on the hardwood floor with a loud thud and slowly hopped its way behind my mother's oyster bed. Now an oyster bed has solid furnishing on the bottom so it couldn't quite get underneath. Thinking that I probably wouldn't be able to get it in the crevice behind, I was just about to concede call it a day, since I'd already rounded up all of the domesticated animals in the house and put them in the living room. Took off my glove, closed all of the doors that weren't necessary for its exit and hoped it would just leave of its own accord.

Quite unfortunately one doorway, doesn't actually have a door to it and it's just the sort of place a mouse would rather love to go, the kitchen. Well nuts... I went into my messy bedroom and got boxes full of stuff to try and barricade the way. Not quite able to fully block it off with just the boxes, I grabbed some linens and stuffed all of the cracks between.

Now this isn't quite the end of the story here because my house has wood framed glass doors, so I actually saw the mouse limping along towards the kitchen. I thought my clever little box barricade would work but, oh fiddlesticks, I had one of the boxes on its side. The mouse couldn't quite make it out to the other side but it certainly didn't seem very content to leave. I tried making a racket of loud noises, I tried baiting it out so I could capture it with a pot, I tried kicking the back of the box so it would come out the other side and run out and I even tried to use the long arm grabber to poke it. The poking perpetuated it a bit but as for the rest, all it could really do is huddle up into the corner. My thought if anything is that this mouse likes its comfort and more than anything seems to want to sleep.

So given that nothing else seemed to disturb it too much, I eventually slid out the box somewhat from its protective formation and tilted it around. Finally the mouse decided enough was enough and made a dart for it but it didn't help too much since it was already trapped inside. Up against the wall of the box it looked so cute with its wee little fuzzy face and beady lil' eyes. So I took the box, put it in the back yard and put the box back on its side again to make sure it could actually get out.

Giving my mother constant updates on the scenario she thought it might be dying and looking for a place where it could do so peaceably and her final thought was it would probably die in the box. I think otherwise as aside from the slow almost limping hops, it seemed quite virile but concerned that it might not be able to find its way outside of the box folds, I went back out and tilted it. Lil' thing just went flying underneath the steps to our back door.

Unfortunately, I'm now concerned that the poor thing won't find shelter for the night because our back yard is surrounded mostly by concrete and the cats could've hopped the fence and grabbed it from another yard. I don't know if there's a place where a mouse could slip out of our yard to find shelter. I didn't know what else I could've done with it though and I suppose it's better that I caught it myself to let it go so it has a fighting chance, rather than simply letting my cats have their way with it in which case it would surly have a rather vicious demise. The kitties really wanted a piece of the action as I had trouble navigating the house in such a way that the cats couldn't come back into contact with it and possibly torture and kill the poor lil' traumatized thing.

I won't know anything else about the manner until tomorrow, where hopefully it'll have run off to someplace unknown, at which point I can only assume it found a crevice leading out of the yard allowing it to find some place warm to sleep.... hopefully. I left the box out there so maybe that'll be good enough if all else fails but I kinda doubt it.

Edit

Bad News: ] I just looked underneath and there's a huge gap underneath my back steps! So in running that direction he may've fell ten feet down. Ran off into a corner and I'm not sure if it was the fall, the initial scrape with the cat or the cold but I spritzed him with the hose to see if he was sleeping, since I didn't want to get anything dirty and he's definitely dead. This is not what I wanted, *&($@! Why can't mice be more like spiders? Those are easy to release...

R.I.P. lil' mouse...

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 7th September 2011 16:27

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Role reversal at its finest.

Sorry to hear that, especially after all that trouble. Well, it can certainly be considered to be at some sort of peace now, in some sense or other.

You made a considerably noble effort, though, and I commend you for that.

We had a mouse in one of our apartments once upon a time, and my roomate was freaking about the whole ordeal. We trapped it between some cardboard boxes, but apparently with far more force than we thought and killed it. I felt pretty awful about it thereafter... Not a fan of killing things, especially when they're only trying to find their own place in this crazy world we've made.

With the exception of mosquitos, earwigs, silverfish and bedbugs. Hate 'em all! Such useless things...

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Games on the Go
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy: Four Warriors of Light
Baldur's Gate

Too much to play, so little time!

Greg