Meeces, I hate meeces!

Remember Mr. Jinks?

With the new puppy this past year, we (No... Nope. Not this time... I am not taking the credit or blame on this story...) It is all Mrs. Hogwallop.

I digress... It was decided that the dogs would eat outside rather than the laundry room. Not enough room for both dogs to move around and eat without bothering each other, so we purchased a big garbage pail with a lid with plastic clamps to keep the dog food out on the back deck. Needless to say Thing 2 discovered quite quickly how to remove the lid and dump dog food all over the deck. He did this many times in our Summer of 2008. This meant little dog food pellets made their way into the cracks of the deck and eventually underneath the deck...

And it has become the new buffet of choice for unwelcomed guests. Even Mrs. Dr. Doolittle is not happy.

Meeces!
Not the cute kind like Pixie & Dixie.

Or, even more fondly remembered, Jerry and his little cousin, Nibbles. Maybe it's my fondness for things French, but I do remember the funny episode, "The Two Mousekateers" - Nibbles and his little baby accent, "Ah, pauvre pussycat! C'est la guerre."

(if you don't remember or never saw it. Tom and Jerry and Nibbles are french muskateers dualing with swords and at the end of the cartoon, Tom (at least it is aluded to, that he is beheaded by the guillotine for not keeping the place mouse-free; to which Nibbles says "poor pussycat, That's war!")If you have the Boomerang channel, you'll see it if you record it a few times.

So today, we...(Hang-on!), IT was decided the Hogwallops needed to deal with the meeces as Mrs. H was seeing them outside rather frequently and (although I'm going out on a limb with this blanket statement) freaked all girly-style with the heeby-jeebies, cooties and whatever else makes your skin curl and crawl... and said we MUST get rid of them!

Ah, BUT wait! We cannot kill them. Oh NO! That would be too cruel! Besides, traps means trouble for the dogs, Thing 2, the Mrs. puts her foot down.

"C'mon, it only takes one snap in the snot-locker and the doglies would leave the traps alone.", I protest.

"No, and no poison either!" So we're on a scavenger hunt for 'humane' mouse-traps.

And we find, The Tomcat live catch mouse trap. Nifty little thing, but it only catches one mouse at a time. Which means we have to dispose of (we only purchased two) of the meeces two at a time. So we take a drive out to a field upon catching our first pair.

Mrs. Hogwallop is freaking out the whole time in the car and pushing me as far to the other side as possible and whincing and getting girly-squeamish and I hold the traps in my hands motioning (you know, boy torture) that I'll drop them in her lap...

We stop next to the field, and I pop the lid open then holding the base, snap my wrist so it flings and ejects Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 into the field - they'll probably die by morning (a nice head fracture or whatever... I don't care what happens to them. I wanted to kill them in the first place, remember?)

So two weren't enough and we head out again to the Home depot to find traps that will hold 5-6 at a time. So we've set them up and we could have a nice harvest tomorrow morning...

Danger Mouse will be coming to seek his revenge.... on us! It's just a matter of time...