Mice, work, life, sheep.

[gement]

I've been stalled at work lately. Last night I sat down to spend the evening catching up and snapping out of it. And then the cat started acting funny, paying a lot of attention to a downstairs closet, when she is usually supremely disinterested in the downstairs.

Housemate says, "Oh, it's probably mice, she's looking at the shredded paper scraps." She sounded perfectly calm about this. The closet contained my things, and I was not perfectly calm about this. She seemed to think I already knew about the shredded paper scraps. It took me all of ten seconds to get untangled from my laptop and go watch the cat.

Tail moving in quick, precise angles about once a second, like a modern dancer doing isolations. She was terribly excited and trying to hold very still at the same time. I knew she was not just smelling absent mice.

Jason and I went down, thanked the cat for the warning, and proceeded with excavation. Final analysis: Three adult mice were living in the two bottom-most boxes, one of which contained a lot of candy from a decade-old long distance relationship. (I never had the heart to eat it, which was foolish. But now I can conclusively report that mice do not like jelly babies!)

The other of which contained all my yearbooks, all my photographs, and all the volumes of The Notebook.* Oh, and a few matted prints of the Doctor and other fan commodities, which I'd presumed were in my box of decorations, if I remembered I still had them at all. Almost all of which escaped damage.

I'm stunned. And very grateful to the cat. I know that as of a month ago the closet and garage were not infested, because arjache helped me organize both, so the mice didn't have time to really settle in and drench everything. There was enough candy that they didn't bother chewing on pictures. A bunch of Dilbert page-a-day calendar pages soaked up most of the mouse pee, protecting the photos. I took pictures of a few irretrievable things from the relationship box, but got a full capture of the details, so I arguably lost almost nothing.

meowse had time to come over and help us clear out the satellite nest site in the garage, bleach the floor, and lay out all my photographs on shelves in the heated laundry room. Thanks again, arjache, for helping me clean so I had a laundry room to use for this. Otherwise this would have felt a lot more crazy.

Still behind on the work, but today is another day. Life is generally good. I am reconsidering cardboard boxes as a primary storage mechanism. It honestly never occurred to me to worry about things chewing or nesting in my stuff; my family never had a mouse problem before.

Also, someone forced sheep to play Pong. I thought you should know.


* The Notebook was a paper-based communication system I invented in high school. I had never heard of a newsgroup. I just invented one. We filled 7 standard spiral-bound notebooks with notes to be read by the group.

Comments

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

This has not been such a great year for Librarian You.8(
I glad there wasn't another Great Lossage. Go go gadget friends and family. 8D

Lessons:

Next time:eat the candy.

Friends help.

Mice are the enemies of The Civilised.

Where is Cat is Safe Stuff. Except for that one Marlene Dietrich biography that the cat sprayed.

Here endeth the lessons.


Now I am afraid to go looking for my old Swamp Things. Could I interest you in a verbal discussion of same?

[gement.livejournal.com]

Very interested, yes.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Great! I'll call you 1815ish your time, unless you say Eek!
*Puts on Big Geeky Geek cap*

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

Not sure eat-the-candy applies--maybe it's "don't keep perishable memorabilia?"

Cats are good. Unfortunately my cat has the habit of brining the basement mice up to play with in the living room (where it is harder for them to escape--although they still hid under the couch, and she expects *me* to get them out for her.)

-B.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Well you have hands.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

True, but the mice are supposed to be her department. I wish she'd kill them quicker--but that'd not be as much fun.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Could be worse. At least she doesn't collect them in the bathtub until she has four or five, and can jump in and play Gladiator!

[plantae.livejournal.com]

To be fair, you do fetch all the *other* toys out from under the couch for her. :)

[annissamazing]

Wow! I knew I liked that cat.

If I'd known you had all the volumes of The Notebook, I very likely would have made us both sit down and re-read all of them. Probably best I didn't know. :)

[jairen82.livejournal.com]

Not all of them! I have two copies (maybe three) at my dad's house, but those notebooks are after your time, and Gement only wrote in the very first one I own! Man, I'd almost forgotten about the notebook. Crazy cool!

[annissamazing]

I have this fantasy that the Notebook is still going, though I know it has almost certainly been replaced by the internet.

My handwriting was so much nicer then.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Ha, except then instead we'd have devoted the time to rescuing my photographs 4 days earlier. Which wouldn't have been bad, but wouldn't have been time spent reminiscing.

Edit: I suppose actually it would have. I mean, man, the wash of high school photos was pretty intense. Darn, now I wish we'd spotted it. But hey, you didn't have to deal with mouse cleanup.

[annissamazing]

I would have happily helped you clean up. The important thing was being with you. I wasn't real particular about the activity. :)

[gement.livejournal.com]

That picture of Eric from the dance is just as awful as I remembered, by the way. Robin commented on it.

[annissamazing]

Hahaha!!! I lost my copy years ago, but I still remember every stinkin' detail. I still find it hard to believe that it was an accident, even though it was not in Eric's nature to make that kind of a face during a photo op. Funniest part was his parents had it up on their mantel for as long as he lived in Lewiston. He cringed every time he looked at it.

[littlemystories.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of Rubbermaid bins for long term storage. After the flooded basement at Alex's, cardboard boxes never go at floor level.

I'm glad everything important survived. :)

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

I've gone to the fold-top plastic bins--they aren't waterproof from above, unfortunately, but are a lot more durable than cardboard boxes.

[plantae.livejournal.com]

Agreed! Let me know if at some point you want a car -> Fred Meyer run.

[gement.livejournal.com]

They ran for the adjoining garage, where their other nest is. We didn't find them in the other nest, which has much less obvious exits. I'm looking into humane trap options so we can figure out if they are coming in again.

[plantae.livejournal.com]

I think the sheep video is the funniest thing I've seen all month. Thanks!

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

Tuning in late...

Yeah, it's worth investing in some plastic bins, at least for the more important and more damageable stuff.

I've done mouse cleanup before, including having to replace a stove they kept nesting in (ugh). No fun.

I hope you can, or did, get them caught and released without incident. Apparently mice die of shock easily, so sometimes they'll up and die even if humanely trapped.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

ellen_kushner is pimping for an anthology looking for queer vampire erotica... and maybe other things.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip!