An Unexpected Visitor: Part 1

I can’t make this stuff up.

Yesterday, June 12 I sent this message to my friend, Trisha, on Facebook. She’s currently having a mouse problem.

Allow me to share my mice story. A few years ago I kept telling my husband that I was sure we had mice in our vents. I was positive they kept waking Anna up at night (she was still in a crib). And our cat would just sit and stare at the vents. He thought I was crazy. I kept on him. "PLEASE," I would say, "there is this terrible smell in Anna's room. I KNOW there are 'rats'!" FINALLY, months later, he looks and by George, there are mice NESTING in our vents! Our dog decided to warm himself under the house and tear down our duct work. The mice from the hay field beside us made straightway for our house. Eventually, we caught DOZENS of the little varmints in our vents and under our house. At night we could hear mouse traps going off! We even set traps in our bedroom vents. An exterminator was called and our entire duct work had to be repaired. I made Nate bleach every "rat" he caught in a bag because I was sure the Bubonic Plague was going to be passed on to my children. They even chewed through my DRYER vent (that same stinky smell) and was eating our cat food. Nate found one sitting on our trash can in the laundry area. Eww. All this to say...I feel your pain.

 

Like I said, I can’t make this stuff up.

Last night at 12:30AM, (or for you technical folks, “early this morning”), my husband comes into our bedroom with a flashlight in obvious distress. I, being dead asleep, bounce up in the bed, heart racing. And thus begins the “whisper yelling.”

“WHAT?! WHAT is it?”

 “I don’t know what we’re going to do about this. I heard a noise the other night and was worried the mice had gotten back in the vents. I heard it again and took my flashlight over there...and it’s a ‘possum. A ‘possum! We have a possum in our vents!”

 

“Oh my word! Couldn’t you have chosen a better time than 1:00AM to tell me this? How do you know!?”

“ I just looked and it’s either a possum or an 8lb rat! What are we going to do?”

 “Nothing tonight.”

So ceased the whisper yelling. I then hear him mumbling around the house and moving a case of water over the vent in case it can push through the vent. I couldn’t help but laugh at this crazy predicament. How in the world did an opossum get under our house? And then I started to panic, what if it pushes the vent out? All I could see when I closed my eyes was a big fat ‘possum waddling through my house! I started counting the vents in our house he could possibly escape from...eleven. At least eleven. Getting back to sleep was quite an issue...

(Stay tuned for how we handle our unexpected visitor.)