Mice, Again

The mice are back; they love the change of seasons. Even though it isn't really fall yet and the weather is still hot, still their tiny mouse brains and their even tinier little mouse day planners tell them that it's time to come into my kitchen and curl up snugly for the winter among my canned beans and oven insulation. Bastards. I hates them. One died some time back in the cabinet and was recently discovered: so that's what that smell was. A called me at work last week to tell me about the dead mouse - you know, breaking news, my daughter the anchorperson, coming to Mom live from the kitchen with a complaint about the dead mouse. So I cleaned out all his horrible decayed mouse corpse detritus and put down some more traps, lavishly baited with peanut butter.

Evil little bastards ate the peanut butter and didn't spring the traps. Naturally. At least, I guess that's what happened, unless it evaporated into thin air and I don't think peanut butter does that. Rum apparently does: I had a big old gallon bottle that I bought for my party in early August, that I figured would last me until Christmas, since I rarely drink liquor. Alas, no, even though it was all sealed up, it's mostly disappeared: just evaporated, I guess. Gone. Vanished. I haven't heard any sounds of mousy revelry coming from the walls (well, no more than usual this time of year) so I doubt the mice removed the cap, constructed a siphon and drained the rum. Perhaps we have Borrowers (she said sarcastically, with an evil glance towards her oldest child.) I wouldn't even have known it was almost gone if it hadn't been for the mouse, so I guess he did do me one favor: without him, I wouldn't have had a chance to rant and rave and holler at the kids and loudly mark the bottle level with a sharpie.

In other breaking news, I went out to lunch today with my mother and my friend S at Fig Bistro and it was lovely. There's something about a really nice lunch and a glass of wine that just makes one feel all civilized like - civilized and ready for a nap. While we were there we saw this lovely creature out the window: truly one of the biggest praying mantises I've ever seen and he posed so graciously for the camera. I keep on trying to take pictures of the orb weavers at work at night on my back porch, because their webs are astounding but alas, my photographic skills are not up for it. The spiders also get exasperated quickly and I have found in my long years of life that it is not wise, oh my children, to exasperate a spider. Or a praying mantis, or a mouse, actually, now that I think about it.