This means war! The joys of country living

I am not a "city girl" by any means. I was raised in Reche Canyon, of all places, so I became quite accustomed to the coyotes, snakes, lizards, and the other wild life that ran around up there. Not that I like any of them praticulary, but you just get used to knowing that you have to cross paths with them from time to time. I had been living in the city environment for the past 3 years, so I didn't really have to deal with them too much. When Michael and I bought our home up here in Llano, although it's in a neighborhood with paved streets and such, our backyard buts up to the base of the mountain. Michael had asked me if I had a problem with that, and of course I didn't. Where we live reminds me so much of where I grew up in Reche Canyon so I guess that is why I instantly felt so comfortable here once we moved in. Since we moved in, just over a month ago, we really haven't had any wild life problems, per-say, and in fact, we've only heard coyotes 2 nights, and just saw one run across the street one time, so I didn't think we'd have too much of a problem. Of course, there is BEAUTIFUL wild life up here that have taken up residence in my front yard, that Michael and I just love to watch from our front windows every morning. We have a family of quail, which just hatched their babies, and it's so cute to see them running around our front yard. We also have a family of squirrels that live in the side yard, that also just had babies, that love to run around. We also have our fair share of frogs too that hop up to the screen doors and around the yard. It's really neat and peaceful and it makes me sigh peacefully at the beauty of it all. I really do live in a beautiful house and to be able to witness such beauties of nature on a daily basis, really is a blessing. However, this past weekend, we had some wild life.... "issues" I should say, that made for a little comic relief as well as two burial ceremonies taking place in our backyard.

Saturday morning, Michael went out to mow our law for the first time. When we first bought the house, since it had been vacant, all our grass was dead, however we were lucky that the previous owners had an AMAZING watering system on the house, since we have so many trees and plants adorning the house as well, it only took a months time frame for our grass to grow in green and lush and for all of my trees to start blossoming. So since our grass was nice and healthy and starting to over grow our front yard now, it was time to cut it. So my hubby heads out to do his husbandly duties of lawn maintenance and does a very fine job of it as well, until he starts racking the yard. Unfortunately, one of the frogs that likes to hop around our front yard, apparently didn't hear the roar of our lawn mower, and didn't escape in time, and my husband, who I know call the "frog murder" ran right over him and decapitated poor Kermit! Poor little guy! So I made Michael give him a proper burial in our backyard and say a little prayer for the poor unsuspecting frog who lost his life to our lawn mower! RIP dear ol' kermie!

Sunday morning, we managed to have another wild life adventure. See last week, while cleaning the floors, I had noticed in the corners, what looked to be like little mouse droppings. Michael and I went on a quest to every room in the house to see where there might be a place for mice to get in, or if there was any chewings on any of the food in our pantry. We cleaned up the droppings and just figured maybe they were old droppings, since we couldn't find anything that would lead us to where a mouse would get in, and since none of our food had been tampered with, and typically that's the first thing you notice with a mouse. So we decided that we would just keep an eye out... besides, we have an indoor cat, granted she may be spoiled and has never actually hunted a day in her life... but it's still in a cat's nature to go after rodents right?!? Well later in the week I was sitting in the office on the computer, when I heard scratching coming from the attic. Yep, sure shit, we had mice up there. But that's ok, as long as they are in the attic and not running around my house that's ok. So Michael and I decided that we'd head to the store, during the weekend to pick up some Decon to put in the attic... again, there was no more signs of mice droppings in the corners and no signs of breakages in our food, we were sure they were just confined to the attic... again... we've got ourselves a tough cat, she'd be SURE to smell out a mouse.... right?!?! Now I know that mice are little and they wouldn't hurt you, but good God almighty, those little suckers creep me the hell out! The thought of having any loose in my house sends shivers down my spine! So all I could hope for was that they were just in our attic.

So Sunday morning, Michael and I get up, and he told me that while he was using our master bathroom the night before, he had heard the scratching coming from the attic above our bathroom and that later that day, we;d head out to pick up some Decon to poison them. So we had a nice breakfast and enjoyed the morning and then I headed in to make the bed so I could start getting ready for the day. I walked into our bedroom and P-Kitty was sitting in our bathroom, kinda just staring out into space, which was really unlike her. She has her usual sitting and laying spots and the bathroom certainly was not one of them. She even ran into our closet in the bathroom and was sniffing around. That had her attention for about a few minutes, then she turned around and left the room like everything was kosher. I had just figured she probably heard the scratching in the attic, which had prompted her to come in and investigate. So I went about my business making the bed. Now... every woman probably does just the same as me. You have your 1,000 decorative pillows that you don't *actually* sleep on, that decorate your bed during the day, but you take off the bed at night. I have just that. So I keep those pillows stacked in the corner of the bedroom. I was grabbing one of my million pillows off the ground to put on the bed, when underneath it, there was a little surprise waiting for me. Now, it took me a good second and a half to realize that it was in fact a REAL mouse, because P-Kitty has a ton of those little cat nip one's, and I had thought maybe Michael had placed one there in an effort to scare me, since I was a little on edge about the "mice issue", noooooo... this mouse wasn't red or green or blue with cloth eyes, this was, in fact, a real little furry brown mouse with beady little eyes looking up at me. He blinked at me!!!!! I jumped up so fast and took off running through the house, screaming like a banshee. I don't think my feet even touched the ground the entire way, as I made my way to the front door, where I stood there, stomping my feet up and down, STILL screaming, as my husband looks at me in horror like I had just witnessed a murder or something. My poor cat even stood there staring at me in horror, with her ears pinned back.

I yell at Michael that I found a mouse in our bedroom and he needed to go get it. Apparently my blood curdling scream had rendered the poor mouse deaf and motionless, because he was still in the same spot he was when I beat feet out of that bedroom at Mach 30. Of course, like the insane person I am, I tell Michael, "Don't kill him, just catch him and put him outside"..... right... I know..... So Michael grabs two plastic cups, and shuts the bedroom door and attempts to catch my furry little friend. The mouse runs under our entertainment center, so Michael calls me in for reinforcements. Now, there is no way my feet are going to be anywhere on the ground in that bedroom till that mouse is out of there, but Michael needs to move the entertainment center to catch him, so I need to watch to let Michael know where the mouse runs to. So I hop up on the bed and prepare myself for the little demon to make his way out from under our entertainment center. Michael moves the entertainment center and the crafty little shit moves with it! So Michael has an idea, we have a friggin cat, she'll definitely chase that mouse out from there right? So Michael brings P-Kitty into our room and we anticipate that her keen cat sense will send her running to the entertainment center, chase out the mouse, and our work will be done. That damn cat, nonchalantly walks up to the entertainment center, right near where the mouse is sitting, sniffs around, and then walks aways and lays down on the floor, giving us this look like, "was there something you needed, because you really interrupted me from something very important". Great! We have a cat that could care less about chasing mice! What are the odds??? So Michael moves the entertainment center again, and this time the mouse goes to run. Well... now P-Kitty sees him run, so she darts off after him, apparently she was thinking that mouse was one of her cat nip toys until the sucker actually moved. She really didn't know what to do, as she has never chased a mouse in her entire life. She kind of batted at him, as she ran after him, but clearly she was confused as to what her role was in this war. She managed to chase him into one of our floor fans, where he just sat there, taunting her and Michael. So I told Michael that was perfect, we could just carry the fan outside ( or HE rather could just carry the fan outside, because I wasn't getting close to that sucker if my life depended on it) and then he could run away to the field and live happily ever after. So Michael takes the fan outside and the little shit STILL doesn't come out. Since the mouse was sitting at the bottom of the fan, the fan blades weren't anywhere near him, so Michael gets the bright idea that he'll turn the fan on, on low, so that the wind scares the mouse into running away.... well... it was starting to work... that was of course until the fan tipped over and Michael heard a **thunk** noise and announced that "we had a little bit of an accident"..... yes... the furry little mouse had fallen victim to the blades of our fan. So Michael had to open the fan, and remove the dead mouse, and bury him in the backyard, next to the frog he buried the day before. Needless to say, we didn't have a very good weekend when it came to animals. Thank God P-Kitty made it through the weekend alive! So after our little mouse adventure, Michael and I headed off to Lowes and $100.00 later we were loaded down with the strongest in mouse artillery. It looked like we were headed to battle! We got some box that shocks them and stores there little corpses in there, as well as the little white traps that they walk into to eat the peanut butter, and then it closes and keeps there corpses in there as well, and we got loads and loads of poison to put in our attic. We were ready to fight these little suckers with everything they got. We want them little bastards to tell all their little mice friends that we Medlin's mean business and to take up residence in somebody else's house! So we'll see what happens, hopefully those traps and all that poison will do some good. I am not really sure I can handle another mouse sighting.

So this weekend was a nice reminder about what it's like to live in the country. P-Kitty is now, in attack mode, in fact, she sat in our bathroom the entire night, guarding to make sure no other mice were going to make it in. This morning though, she kind of lost her luster on the mouse hunt, as she now lays on her pillow in the spare bedroom taking a nap. All I can say is I hope one of those mice just come running across the floor today while Michael is at work, I may end up going into labor, or worse, I'll have to run across the street and talk my neighbor into coming and catching it. If anybody sees me driving around the Inland Empire today, it's because I have discovered another mouse and that there was no way in HELL I was going to stay in this house with that sucker loose, until my husband got home to catch it!!! Little bastards! This means war!!! On a side note, I do have my gun, maybe I can just shoot at them??? What do you think??? LOL