Ho ho fucking ho.

Tis the Season.

After my annual holiday freak-out the other day (no, I haven't blogged about that one) I decided I needed to make up for it. I was going to decorate out front some. Justin would come home and be amazed at how beautiful the house (or at least the outside of it) was. The neighbors would be in awe. Cars would drive slowly by just to gaze at the merriment of decor. Martha Stewart would soon be calling for tips and I'd be featured in Better Homes & Gardens.

I begin hanging large, colorful decorations from the tree out front. As is customary whenever we are outside for more than five minutes and our evil neighbor is home, she comes outside, picks up a stray stick or two, and then leaves. She drives the opposite direction from our house. ~ I take this as a sign that the beauty of my Christmas decorating must be working as the Grinch has felt the need to flee it's cave.

Then the kids get up. First Shannon and I foolishly think that I can finish the last of my decorating (for now) while he stays inside. HA!! Then, because I don't ever seem to learn, I foolishly think that maybe Shannon and I can sneak outside while I finish the rest of this decorating while Tristan sleeps. Even bigger HA!!!! -- actually, I think I peed a little laughing at that last one.

Shannon willingly & eagerly gets on socks, shoes, & a coat, though we argue about which coat. Tristan begins whining when he can't find the socks that he took off during nap. Apparently they've become invisible. He's walking around, jacket over his shoulder, barefoot. I tell him to get everything on and come outside when he's done. = Mistake #1. This will never happen, we all know it won't, it will take several interruptions & back and forths before he is actually capable of joining us outside.

Mistake #2 & this is the doozy one: I clip a leash to a bouncy Foster and hand the other end to Shannon. I expect this to go well. After all, they're only supposed to be coming out on the front porch, sitting down, and watching me finish this last little bit of wrapping the columns. What could go wrong?? I mean, how could handing responsibility of a 125lb puppy to an almost 7 year old kid, who can't sit still either and weighs 60lbs, possibly go wrong?!?
On one of my trips back inside to help Tristan get fully dressed, Foster decides to follow me. There goes the little tree near the front door. Luckily no damage done.
Then Foster finds a pumpkin to play with. Yes, a pumpkin. Big dogs play with big toys. Anyway, I think this might be ok because he'll lay there and play with it while I quickly finish. I've already told Shannon to not try and take him into the front yard.

....... I have my back turned.

The pumpkin Foster is playing with goes rolling into the mulch. He goes after it. Shannon decides he doesn't like standing on the porch anymore, and since Foster has gone into the mulch he decides to go stand in the yard.

So - have you ever seen a puppy/dog get real wound up?? I mean REALLY wound up? You know, where they start running around in near circles like their butt is on fire?? And they're kinda bouncing in the middle of all of it?

Well, this is what I turn around to see, as I hear Shannon let out a cry. Foster has gotten all excited and wound up. He is running around in circles, circles that overlap Shannon who is still holding the leash but is now on the ground. I tell Shannon to let go of the leash & get up. I get Foster's leash but he's now in the insane gremlin mode. I have to tackle him and pin him down into some form of submission. I now lose my cool.

I growl at Shannon that I told him not to go in the yard, that I've warned him about trying to play with big dogs, & to go inside. I give Foster a bad dog whap and drag him inside & into his crate. I come outside and then growl at Tristan to go inside as well. I say things I regret. I contemplate burning down the house, or at least the column that I am trying to finish wrapping. I hear Martha Stewart putting me on the "do not call" list and Better Homes and Gardens finding someone else. I hear the neighbor's gossiping "those poor kids!" I hear someone saying "then why did she get a big dog?" - I think it is Shannon's voice in my head on that one. I am sad and beaten.

I finish the final column and drag all my decorating supplies inside and put them away. I hear the kids in on the computer, listening to Mister Rogers. I don't know why, but it induces a child-like cry from me. A "yes, everything is bad and wrong, please say something soothing and make it all better" type of cry. That doesn't happen though. I go change pants and toss my jeans, now covered in grass and dirt from tackling the dog, into the wash. I curse myself for losing my cool. For not seeing it all coming. For blaming it on anyone other than myself.

And that is how you know the holidays have officially begun. Tis the Season.

The Long Tale of the Mouse House

When you live in a house that is over 100 years old, when your basement is a dirt basement, and where there are all kinds of holes leading from outside to in and from basement to living areas, you can't really be shocked when you get mice. Last year, when we saw the tell-tell signs of their little "trails" we weren't shocked. We never actually saw a mouse, though I'm guessing now when I look back I might've heard a couple and not known it at the time. This year however, we were SHOCKED!!
Apparently, if you have mice one year and don't do anything about it the following happens: when the male mice leave for spring and travels of adventure and food, leaving wives home to try and clean out winter's mess, they join up with the other male mice from the neighborhood. During the day they rummage through compost piles, get chased by cats and have bravely duels with birds of prey. At night they like to camp together where, over a large mouse-sized bonfire, they drink and swap stories. Well, apparently, our male mouse was QUITE the drinker & talker (which kinda fits in here at the Blue Nymph). He bragged and bragged about life and lack of poisons as well as no house cat. He continued to tell his tales while drinking, eventually drinking himself into a stupor and passing out. Here is the photo his buddies have posted on the internet:While he slept it off though the other male mice got to talkin' and decided that they were tired of risking their lives with cats and D-Con. They wanted to see how good it really was here! And so, much to the female mouse's surprise, the male mouse not only came home in the fall with all of his buddies, but all of their families as well. We've since found little broken-down mouse-size wagons in the yard and now we know where they came from!!
So, you can imagine our COMPLETE shock and awe (some of the new mice were originally Texans) when we started seeing the mice. They'd come up in the half-bath in our bedroom through a hole in the floor, they'd run across the living room, and they'd scurry through the kitchen. They quickly found where the chicken feed was kept and made themselves quite fat on it ~ we put it in a rubbermaid bin only to have them laugh and climb up the sides, then we put a lid on it and to their dismay they haven't been able to get into it anymore. We'd even begun hearing them in the wall, thumping around and making the wall sound as if it is going to come crashing down if we were to try and hang a picture.
Being environmentally minded as we are, we didn't want to put out poisoned bait. Getting a cat was out for a couple reasons: 1) allergies, 2) we have a one-week long tolerance for cats, and 3) there is no guarantee the cat would be a good mouser. The suggestion of getting a black snake and letting it live loose in the house was met with enthusiasm from Justin but VERY quickly squashed! The use of peppermint oil as a deterent was good, but not enough and quickly became costly. We did get live traps, though Jomo ate one of those. We seemed to be having quite a hard time catching the mice (words spreads among mouse colonies!). A snap-trap was nixed since they can sometimes decapitate the mouse and leave a bloody mess, we have nosy dogs, and if you note the post below, we have nosy little boys!
Finally, after searching the internet we came upon something called "Shake Away" ~ http://www.critter-repellent.com/mice-1/mice-in-my-house-attic.php. I was skeptical, but it says to be all organic and natural. It won't hurt pets or plants and so on. They also offer a 120 day money back guarantee. It is made of/from predator urine/scent, so it makes the mice think there is a fox or something living nearby and scares them away. We ordered the kit, which comes with little stockings to make balls for hard to reach places, a scooper, and gloves. We've gotten that put down now and it seems to be working, though we did see a big increase in the mice we were seeing as they were running around quite scared and not sticking to normal paths. Last Thursday I went to lay down and heard a crunching beside my head on my nightstand. We were luckily able to catch the bugger, and found the "best disposal method" - drowning it. It is the most humane thing we can think to do. (And though I am not terribly girly, I did yelp and jump when I heard and saw it .. you would too if it was that close to your head!!)
We've also found the proper bait (peanut butter!) and learned to put it just inside one end of the live trap, which is then shut, making the mouse walk through the one open end, hopefully springing the trap. Last Friday Justin managed to catch 5 in the trap. All were quickly drowned except for the last one. Justin ignored my advice to place the trap in a deep plastic bowl filled with water, and instead tried dumping the mouse out of the trap into the water. He ran off behind our microwave instead. We did catch him later (we think).
We are beginning to think we're getting successfull at ridding ourselves of the mice. I was able to catch 7 mice yesterday, but they were all tiny babies. All the parents seem to be long gone now. In fact, I caught 3 in one trap!!! Quite a shock when I was dumping out the bodies.
All of this mice catching and drowning has had an interesting effect on the boys. They were quite curious at first and so we explained it as honestly as we could while keeping it as simple and age-appropriate as we could. They were at first quite interested, though now don't care as much. Tristan has happily waved and hollered "bye-bye" as he would to anyone, and in general they're used to seeing the trap in the water and know I'm drowning a mouse. Shannon did tell his Grandma that he had to protect Tristan from the mice. This leads me to my last little bit. Apparently, Shannon didn't follow his own words. I was making dinner last night, with dishwasher going and (I'll admit!) tv on, while the boys were occupied with Noggin. Suddenly I heard Tristan screaming and crying and Shannon hysterically yelling "MOMMY, MOMMY!!!" He was yelling something else, but I couldn't make it out, and so I assumed Tristan had fallen and hurt himself. I went running in there, to find them on the couches, hysterical. The mouse trap sat open on the couch beside Tristan. Apparently a mouse had been caught in the trap, and Tristan was "trying to help" or just plain ole curious. Either way, he had it on the couch with him and accidentally (?) opened it, only to find out what happens when you do that!! The mouse jumped out and onto Tristan before running off.
Shannon was straddling the couches, trying desperately to keep his feet off the ground but in true kid-logic not having the sense to just sit on ONE couch. Tristan was on the little couch sobbing and screaming. I picked him up and tried to sooth him. This took quite a long while, involved me taking him into the kitchen with me, singing to him, and then ~ because holding a crying 2 1/2 year old while you're trying to drain pasta and make baked spaghetti is NOT a good idea ~ plopping him in his high chair for crackers. By now I was trying to not laugh too hard at it all.
This morning I went to check the trap again to find the dogs' had found it once more and licked the peanut butter out (at least that is what I PRAY happened!). So it is cleaned out, and has been freshly filled, and waiting more hungry and scared little mice. I have seen one more today, coming out from under the couches to check for kid-dropped crumbs on the rug. Hopefully I will catch him. The Shake Away people said to give it a full 2-3 weeks to see full-effect, but we're pretty hopefull at this point. Let's just hope that next spring and summer, if there is a male mouse leaving here, that he will have a very different story to share with all of his buddies!!

*Update as of 2/8 ~ The Shake-Away stuff really seems to be working. We've talked with them via phone for recommendations about the mice running around very crazy and their staff was very helpful. We were told the mice may be trying to "relocate", so if we've found a new spot where they've taken up, we've placed a little Shake-Away in a dish. So far, no returns. Hopefully we are truly near the end of this saga and we'll know what to do next year.*