Critters!

So, it has been a long time since I posted -- too long. My apologies -- there isn't much point in keeping a blog if I'm not going to post on it. I have my reasons, which range from not having enough time (but then, who does have enough time?) to irritations with the world on a whole. Anyway...I want to try to do better.

So, I'm going to get back on track by telling you the tale of our critter problems. It has been a few weeks -- maybe a month or more since this happened -- but the story needs told. One day I walked into the kids bathroom to see something green on the shower wall. Now, the kids bathroom is very white and bright -- white tub and surround, white shower curtains, white trim and very pale beige walls. So, a neon green object on the wall stands out. I look, expecting to see something of the kids glued to the wall, only to find a tree frog (such as the one pictures below that I found in my flower bed) clinging to the wall. Okay, how on EARTH did a frog get in my kids bathroom?!?! The window doesn't even open!!!


So, what to do? I can deal with furry critters, but I DON'T DO AMPHIBIANS!!! I briefly considered calling Jeremy and telling him he HAD to come home over his lunch to take care of this. Then I thought again, since I'm pretty sure he would have said no anyway. Ok, so who do I call? Yup, you guessed it, poor Betty got a call. The first thing she asked me was how much Jose I had consumed that morning. And she asked me that again after she peeked around the bathroom and couldn't find it. Once we found it hidden on the window sill, she finally believed that I wasn't skunk drunk at 11:00 in the morning. So, luckily, Betty got it outside for me. But a few hours later, I look out my front door to see it clinging to the side of the house at eye level right by the door. Poor thing...I got my broom out and played a game of hockey-frog until it was out in the street (I don't think I killed it, but it was pretty sad looking by the time I was finished).

Jeremy almost always gets up about 20 minutes before I do. On good days, I get up once he's in the shower, so that I'm ready to get in when he gets out. About a week after the above incident, I did just this. As I was opening the door to the bathroom, Jeremy says to me (from the shower), in a very serious voice, "Michelle, stop. There is a frog on the window." Now, just so you know...Jeremy likes critters even less than I do. So, I backed out of the room and shut to the door. Crap! How are these things getting in? There isn't a window that opens in our bathroom either!

These things were too big to have come in through the exhaust vents. My only conclusion, after having read dozens of blog posts with similar problems, is that they were coming up the drain of the tub. So, we keep our drains closed now, which is slightly annoying because we have a perpetual puddle of stagnant water in our tubs. And I check under the toilet seats, and behind the toilet and around the windows, etc. before I do anything else in the bathroom!

And somewhere in the middle of these two incidents, I went out to my garage one day (actually, Lucy puked on the garage floor and I went out to clean it up) to hear a funny skittering sound. I look around and note that the noise is coming from an empty box on the floor (we're getting ready to put a bunch of stuff in storage before we put the house on the market, so I've been hoarding boxes). I look in the box to find a mouse. A little thing -- a creepy, ugly little thing. Sorry, but I don't like mice AT ALL -- or rodents of any sort for that matter. Luckily, the box was really tall, so it had apparently crawled up the spare car seat on the floor and fell in, but couldn't get out. Now, normally I have NO compassion for critters in my house. I don't usually let critters escape alive. But, since this thing was already contained in the box, I picked it up, carried it out to the road and down the street a little before letting it out. Wanna know that little ~!@# did? It ran back up the street, straight up my driveway and back to the same corner it started in. Gah!!! It was WAR now. I put rat poison down...I haven't seen the mouse again, but most of the rat poison was eaten.

The worst thing was that we had THREE spare car seats sitting on the floor of the garage, all of which had obvious signs of mouse habitation. One ended up in the trash (it was too old really anyway), but the other two had to be taken apart and cleaned. I really HATE having to wash car seats.

So, apparently my home is just a bit to inviting...I need to find the critter welcome mat that is apparently hidden somewhere and remove it!