Les Souris - Eeek!

I couldn't remember the French word for mouse and had to ask my son, who goes to FI.  I love that my son's French vocabulary is now more extensive than my own.  Well, I love it and I hate it.  No one likes a smartass kid!

Here is a picture of my office (with said smartass in the foreground).  Please do not ask me what is in his mouth because I do not know or care.

I know, this is not a very exciting picture; however, if you look to the top right, above the door, you will see a hole.  Here's a close-up:

That hole was made by a RODENT!  On Friday night, the kids and I were watching Freaky Friday (2003.  Jamie Lee Curtis, Mark Harmon and sober Lindsay Lohan; I give it 3.75 stars; it's cute and funny).  I packed the kiddies off to bed, went into the office and SHRIEKED! RB and Nathaniel bolted into the room and I pointed at the hole.

See?  There really was an animal scratching in my walls, and I was NOT exaggerating about the horrendous scratching in my previous post.

While we were examining the hole, the rodent actually had the gall to stick its nose out of the hole and begin scratching again in earnest.  It was awful.  We saw its schnoz and fur and such at the hole and I was FREAKING out! I may as well have been in the fetal position.  I deplore rodents.  I have no problems with snakes, spiders, bees or other insects but I cannot abide rodents (not a fan of the lowly maggot or silverfish either).  There is a scene in the disturbing novel The Painted Bird (Jerzy Kozinsky) and it involves a farmer being eaten alive by a pit of writhing rodents. To this day, I cannot get that image out of my head.  Read The Painted Bird only if you are a masochist and are interested in the violence, and sexual and social deviance that characterizes wartime.  I should not have listened to the individual who recommended this book to me when I was a tree-planter.

Back to the rodent.  On Thursday, when I first heard the terrible clawing, and before I knew that I would have a freaking hole in my ceiling the following evening, I was smacking at the wall with a book (Bicycle Repair Manual for those who are curious), which I thought might scare the creature away. Maybe I should have pounded harder.

I went to my local hardware store and bought some mousetraps from the incompetent but friendly  employee.  He seemed to know a fair bit about mouse-catching and we debated the merits of poison over traps and decided to go with traps.  Because I am a jokester and the employee seemed like a fellow with a sense of humour, I started to call him Mousekiller.  Exempli gratia:  "Hey, Mousekiller, what do you think about rat poison?" He seemed to like the moniker.

In the mousetrap aisle, I asked MK to demonstrate how to set the trap, because I'd never set one before, but MK was clueless. I mean, completely clueless.   Eventually, I figured it out on my own, while he was fiddling with the thing, and MK congratulated me and told me to go on Youtube for backup.  He seemed embarrassed by his ineptitude but I thought it was funny.  I told him that he was not living up to his reputation and that I would have to stop calling him MK.  He thanked me for coming in and told me that I made his day.  Awww....

Anyhow, RB set the traps with gobs of peanut butter and we caught four mice on Friday night.  We haven't caught anything since then (today is Monday) and I am hoping that the evil rodent that ate our wall is one of the deceased.

Here is what greeted me in my office on Saturday morning:

Drywall dust and bits of fur / lint / insulation all over my Henry Napartuk!

And this mess:

The hole also became quite a bit larger. It doesn't look so bad in this picture, but trust me, it's ugly and disconcerting!

I am hoping that the creature that did this either:
a) escaped and had its tiny brains pulverized in the trap or
b) died in the wall.

If it's the latter, it means that there will be a god-awful smell in the office sometime soon.  Something to look forward to.

I meant to write about the pinworms (which we do NOT have) in this post and also a mini-review of another graphic novel, and lastly how I received a senior discount on a receipt (horror!!!!!!) on the weekend, but that will have to wait.

Cheers.