So this is the part where I say something about what I’m wearing. I could do that, or I could tell you about how I cleaned up a crime scene at 2:00 Monday morning. Oh, you want to hear about the second one? OK, you got it.
Well, there’s a mouse problem here at Casa de Sarah. We caught 3 mice in mid-December. There wasn’t a squeak for more than a month, and just when we thought the coast was clear we got another one about a week ago. The very first mouse we caught with a humane trap, but the other 3 were only discovered with the help of our trusty feline Coco. In the middle of the night, I would wake up to the sound of her running up and down the hallway and find her cornering a terrified little creature. She never killed them; she just chased them around and sometimes carried them in her mouth. Then I would catch them in a tupperware and take them outside. I’m a hippy, what can I say?
So that brings us to 2:00am Monday. Once again I woke up to the sound of frantic claws on carpet. Sure enough, Coco and mouse are in the hallway. Mouse isn’t looking so hot. I scooped it up to take outside. That’s when Kristin says, “Umm…THERE’S BLOOD.” Yup. Little spots of blood up and down the hallway carpet, and even some splatter on the wall. I went ahead and took the mouse outside in the snow, where it died. Poor thing. But now maybe an owl or something can eat it. It’s the circle of life. And it moves us all.
When I went back inside, Kristin was hard at work cleaning up the blood in the hallway. That’s when I noticed there were a few spots and smears in the living room, too. Oh look, here’s more in the kitchen. And the dining room. WHERE DOES IT END? How much blood can a mouse possibly have? If this had been a human instead of a mouse, it would have been an episode of Scandal. Or CSI: Indianapolis.
If you can believe it, I had a little trouble falling back to sleep. Cleaning up a homicide can do that to you. Kristin and I agreed this was one of the weirdest things we’ve ever done at two in the morning, and that includes undergrad.
OK, I’ll try to get back to talking about clothes tomorrow. In the meantime, be sure to share your best pet and pest stories in the comments below 🙂
similar Shirt (on sale) // Sweater // similar Boots // similar Necklace // Sunglasses (on sale) // Bag // Lips “Plushest Punch”
Something to get your mind off my gruesome story: It’s the Real Life Remix…
Ok just because you asked about pet stories: The hubs and I lived with my brother and his wife for a while until we found our own place. The sister-in-law has a grown cat (Picatso), and a little kitten (Punky). My mom’s cat had a litter and only one little kitten survived, which I adopted and named Ginny. Ginny happens to be Picatso’s little sister. So Punky and Ginny ,being lively ,are running up and down the place, and Picatso isn’t loving them at all. Until, one evening we hear squeaking. We went outside to find Picatso had caught a mouse and was teaching Ginny and Punky to hunt. If it got away from one of the kittens Picatso would catch it again, and bring it back. It would have been super adorable, if a poor terrified mouse wasn’t being tortured….
I love the shirt you’re wearing! And the sunnies!
Right around Christmas, our cat caught a mouse that was apparently living in the vent in our house. She didn’t kill it like I thought she would though – she just wanted to bat it around and carry it gently in her mouth. I about had a heart attack when I saw it running across the floor, but we were able to “set it free” outside before it escaped again. I still couldn’t sleep because I was somehow convinced it would find a way to get back in the house, climb the stairs and jump into our bed!
I had something like this….only I woke up to little blood drops everywhere! Turned out my cat had a bloody nose! Rushed him to the the vet….. they did tests and luckily it was nothing. But those blood drops were all over the place. Turns put that my cat could not wipe his nose, only shake. And I thought I taught him well!
I have 2 cats. The background on these cats is one of them is really big and lazy. The other one is younger, faster, smarter, and skinnier. One time we were all in the kitchen cooking dinner, including the cats. Husband noticed a mouse saunter out of a small hole between our cabinets right into the middle of the kitchen floor. I look over, I see the mouse notice the cats (who were at this point facing the opposite direction of the mouse, begging for scraps), he turns around, and quietly walks back into his hole. The cats never moved, never even noticed the mouse. I was expecting this from Fatty but not from the smarter cat.
Also one time I found a very dead, mummified mouse in the toe of my cowboy boots. I couldn’t wear them again for at least a year. I found the mouse when I went to go put my foot in the boot and my foot hit something, which I thought was a balled up old sock. Ew.
Anyway, the story is that some cats are very lame at catching mice (or even just noticing them). But I am glad that we didn’t have to clean up mouse blood.
P.S. have not seen mouse ever since the kitchen incident. I wonder if he got the message.
Oh man, that is brutal. Cats gotta hunt, but it’s spooky when your sweet kitty proves that she’s capable of such savagery! Luckily, I have a fabulous, ineffectual feline. Unluckily, that means I have to do all the mouse hunting myself! One night when I was home for Christmas, I was up late in their sunken living room and noticed a mouse scurrying around the perimeter. This gave me a serious advantage. I smeared a little peanut butter on a plate and set it out, then I went back to web-surfing. Eventually the little mouse came out to inspect the PB and I quickly trapped him with a wire trash basket. I waited until the sun came out and then took him to his exciting new home: the outside. I’m a bit of a hippie at heart as well. It’s not the most harrowing tale, and the PB did most of the work, but I’m still pretty proud. This also lead to my best if shortest lived nicknames: The Great Mouse Hunter!
My mom’s cat hid his dead (but thankfully not bleeding) mouse under his little cat bed and we think it was there for a long time because the heat from the bed petrified the poor little guy…
Plus, your cat is the cutest ever – I love that coloring!
Most of the “crime scenes” I’ve cleaned up have been of the doggie destruction variety. Broken plates (complete with blood all over the floor where she cut herself), feathers from a mangled down comforter, destroyed mail. The only time we had a dead animal incident was when one of our pups accidentally killed a baby rabbit. Our pup immediately came and got me and took me to the bunny!
The texture of your cardigan is fabulous! Love it!
http://kacieskloset.blogspot.com/
yes, no mice OR cats for me. The pugs are afraid of my shadow and I’m ok with that!
xx
Here&Now
Enter my current giveaway!
Love this look
http://www.fashionforlunch.net
It looks like when Fivel went west, he made it only as far as Indianapolis. Poor Fivel.
Wow, how crazy! And your hippy side is so sweet to consider the circle of life!
-AJ
OccasionallyAJ.com
Last year I had a serious pest problem. Were talking TONS of mice and…RATS!! It was so horrible. We tried all kinds of things, my boyfriend found a huge rat nest under our fridge which we cleaned out a few times. One day he hears the rat under the fridge so he goes to shake it and the rat runs out right between his legs and proceeds to run down the hallway into our bedroom! He never sees the rat come out so needless to say we sleep in the guest bed that night. A few weeks later hes gone home to visit friends and I am home alone. We had a rat trap set by the fridge (not the humane kind sadly, we had passed that level of compassion months ago) which had been there for a few days. I wake up from sleeping to a strange scratching noise and open the bedroom door to see a HUGE rat trying to slip under the closet door to make his escape, unluckily for him he has the rat trap just barely clamped on his back leg so he is unable to sneak out through the closet because he cannot fit his body+trap under the crack. I totally freak, I try to use a broom to brush him out the door to no avail, he keeps trying to squeeze under his usual exit routes. The whole time the thing is squeeling at the top of his rat lungs and its freaking me out bad. A friend advises me to put in headphones so I dont have to hear the horrible noise while I try to get him out. I finally get a rake from the yard which I use to hook the edge of the trap and drag the whole thing out the front door. I opted to skip the headphones and just scream along with the rat while this whole process unfolds. He then runs off the porch with the trap still on his leg 🙁 I figure that sadly he will bleed to death or something. Three days later I am leaving the house for work and I see some movement in some leaves along the edge of the driveway, and low and behold it is my rat! He has been dragging that trap around with him for three days and managed to survive! I decide this guy has some serious resolve and I get up the guts to approach it and use my foot to release the trap and set him free. I was very glad the saga was over and placed a long overdue call to the exterminator that day.
This might be the best story yet!!!