This Means War (and I think we're losing)

On Friday as I was playing my nightly marathon of Grand Theft Auto IV, I was interrupted by the sounds of what can only be described as "the sounds of mice humping". I'm not sure if they were inspired by the racy scenes of GTA IV on the screen or if perhaps the ultrasonic mice evaporators that we purchased were, instead of blaring out an ultra-high frequency noise equivalent of mice nails on a chalkboard (which is what I really hoped they were), blaring out the rodent version of Barry White. Regardless, they were making so much noise that I had to get up and go see what the hell was going on. I opened the storage area underneath of our 55 gallon aquarium to be greeted with what can only be described as a small male mouse attempting to pull on his trousers as he scampered off. At first I thought that the large female had been evaporated successfully by the ultrasonic device but on careful consideration afterwards I think she may have been using a Predator like device to become invisible. I never did see either one of them actually run away but I couldn't find either one of them either.


The day after this encounter, Megan found a small mouse turd on top of the tissue box that she keeps on her bedside table. I think the mice have made their feelings on this clear, the gauntlet has been thrown. At this point I think our only options are to either escalate the conflict to less friendly mice removal means or to surrender to our new mouse overlords.

Before:

After:

(These pictures are the right and left sides of the car from today.)

We kind of sort of totaled our car hydroplaning on the turnpike yesterday. Everyone is fine aside from a few bruses and sore muscles (amen for side impact air bags) but stress is high. It has been officially declared as totaled by the insurance company. Hopefully the check will come somewhat close to how much we still owe on this beast though who knows.

Update

Just wanted to drop in a status update since we haven't recently. Jordan is still growing like a cute little weed and has been pulling up on everything that she can reach. She especially likes to pull up on the TV stand so that it can beam its HD goodness straight into her skull. Jaxon and her continue to play the "I'll play with your toys, you play with mine" game. Jaxon loves her Pooh bear and she loves Big Duck, Squirrel and gross badger rags.

We continue to have uninvited house guests in the form of wee little mice. We caught one every day this week until yesterday. Susan Kath suggested we get an ultrasonic rodent repellent thing but since we still had hamsters so we couldn't do that. Since then they've both passed away so maybe now we should get one. I think the neighbors are getting suspicious about me walking across the street with a strange metal box every day.

R.I.P. Boston Baked Bean and Java Bean (burying them in the backyard reminded me of the hamster graveyard in Garden State). I think we'll hold off on any replacement rodent purchases for now. If Megan wasn't worried about Hantavirus, we could just replace them with mice and solve two issues at once...

Quiet as church mice

A couple of weeks ago, Megan and Phil reported seeing a mouse in the house. Being the liberal hippies that we are, we decided to get some live traps so that A) Megan wouldn't have to stumble upon a decapitated mouse corpse B) Jordan wouldn't toddle into an errant trap and get hurt when she put it in her mouth (as she most certainly would) or C) We'd become haunted by cute little ghosts. We started with a couple of traps from PIC. We wound up catching 2 mice in a week or so and released them across the street at the Lutheran church.

Well, the second mouse we caught almost chewed through the trap and I was tired of baiting it with peanut butter (it was messy and gross).

Since I figured we probably would have more mice than traps, I ordered a new one from Amazon. Behold, the mousinator! This thing traps mice like no body's business. I set it out in the morning unbaited. When I came home at 2:30, there were 3 mice inside. Three mice and no bait used. I guess they just cant resist a little tunnel to crawl in.

They were kind of small so I'm hoping that we got their litter mostly captured and released and that they're joining the choir on Sunday like I always read about when I was a kid. Since then we've caught one more. They're kind of jumpy and Megan still doesn't like them much but this trap is a breeze to set up and use.

We'll keep the ticker updated.

Paternety Test: Passed

Papa Phil is watching Jordan this afternoon. I stayed home with her this morning because she was sick and I was feeling too lazy to drive to work in the rain. As she started to feel better I got less and less work done because I was playing "No no, that's not yours" and chastising the dog for continuously bringing his toys to her so that I'll take them away from her and throw them (I'm learning to just take them away from her and keep them instead). Phil agreed to watch her this afternoon so I could actually get some work done (excluding me blogging this *cough*). A couple of minutes ago I got this email from Phil:

Your daughter just crawled over and got the X-Box remote and turned the X-Box on.

She is so obviously my daughter. Good job kiddo!

Jordan becomes mobile

Here's the first and second time our daughter ever crawled. She loves the little yellow shapes that fit inside her red and blue shape globe thing so we used them to lure her into crawling. She's an old pro at it now though so we started baby-proofing the house and getting ready to make more changes in our lives.

The first time she ever crawled:



The second time:

Couldn't we just have a dog for mayor?

It appears that we may be joining the ranks of small towns with odd mayors. In the election yesterday the old "good ole boy" mayors were shot down by a 19 year old kid with ambitions. Since no one had > 50% of the vote, we're going to have a dance off or something to decide who wins. I can't wait for the montages!