Ah, Geeze

It happened again. Another month has slipped right on by. Where the heck have I been???? Oh yeah.... school, work, and curling up in the fetal position while crying over the economy. Enough about that. I had strictly ordered Joe to write about the Great Mouse Rescue in July. Well, bubba, now you have to write about it because I've set up the blog post!

During a span of two days, we heard noises in one of the walls in the house. We had heard the sounds during the winter when we figured some mice were holed up hiding from the snow. This time around, the noises were way worse than any before. When I had to sleep in the guest room one night because of the noise, I decided to do something about it. On a side note, the rock, I mean my wife, slept through all the nightly noises.

We figured out the noise was coming from a wall between the living room and our bedroom. I pressed my ear in the corner to try and pinpoint the spot. I had to use a ladder because the mouse was higher than I anticipated. When I had an idea of where the noise was coming from, I used my keyhole saw and cut a hole in the wall. I used my flashlight to peer up the wall and saw nothing except a spot where some insulation had formed a gap. When I peered down I was pretty surprised at what I saw.

About five inches below where I cut the hole was what I would call a "mouse deathtrap." I recently deceased mouse and a pile of bones were sitting on a piece of wood in between the studs. And there was the mouse who was still alive, probably scared out of his mind. Now the rescue operation was under way.

I originally tried to use tongs to get a hold of the mouse, but he moved to fast for me to grab. After thinking it over for a moment, I got an idea. We found a cup that fit perfectly in the wall (thank you Dover Business College!), and a sleeve used for a gift card. It took a few attempts, but I was able to entice the mouse into the cup, and closed the top with the sleeve. From there, we brought the cup outside across the street, and let the mouse loose so that he could roam somewhere else.

The mouse was rescued, and after an informal "service" for the other remains that I cleaned out from the wall, I was able to close up the wall. Of course until I can remedy the hole from above that the mice were falling through, the wall is only temporarily closed.