A mouse in the house

So that was fun! We had a mouse in the house yesterday! I was sitting upstairs working late at night in Eric's office (I've practically confiscated it), when I saw what looked like a large piece of lint drift across the floor.

"My, that's a large piece of lint," I thought to myself.

Turning to see this wonder, I noticed that it was not your average piece of lint. It was much thicker, and looked somehow fuller.

And it was looking at me.

In a flash, I realized that this was no ordinary, household piece of lint. It was an ordinary household mouse.

Now, I like rodents. I think they're cute. So when I saw him, I had a flash of fascination with seeing a third mammal occupying space within the two-mammal abode. Then when I blinked, he bolted.

He bolted so fast that I was honestly startled. I didn't react immediately: in fact, it took me a second to realize that I was startled, and I only realized it when I felt the cool-water-dumped-on-your-head chemical that usually follows a startled/all functions on high alert/adrenaline chemical.

Does anyone else have that feeling, or am I just wierd?

Anyway, so I sat staring at the empty floor space, trying to figure out what just happened, when my mind came back to me in a rush. There was a mouse in the house, and no matter how much I liked him, he had to go.

"Eric!" I hollered.

"What?" he responded.

"........There's a mouse in the house." I hesitated to say it, because I was still fascinated by the Mus musculus.

".....What?" He then turned to his cell phone. "Hold on, baby, I'll call you back."

He came walking into the office. "What?"

"There's a mouse in the house."

He broke into a smile. "Really?"

"Yeah, he just ran under the desk." I started to trace his path with my eyes, and moved a box. Turns out, he was hiding right behind it, so he bolted again. Giggles followed as the chase was on. Eric grabbed a shoebox, and since I was the one wearing shoes, I also was the one to come close to him. He was a fast little guy; he zipped around the box and hopped over my foot as deftly as if he was born to do just this.

He probably had been born to do just this.

Eric got a shoebox. When he came back in with the box, I took my eyes off the mouse, and he darted off, except this time, I didn't see where he went. We figured that he went straight into the closet. Sure enough, that is exactly where he went. We pulled stuff out and managed to corner the little rascal, but he zipped out and around again. We cornered him again and trapped him, but couldn't get him into the box, so Eric got some gloves, and I reached over and picked him up and put him into the box.

In the shoebox, he started jumping around, and was pretty close to jumping out. We decided to move him from the shoebox to a bigger box where he couldn't hop out as easily. Eric took the picture on his iPhone and I put him outside, in the woods right behind the house.

Not 20 minutes later, another mouse came sauntering up the stairs to the living room where Eric was. There was a moment of hesitation, and then I heard, "Smitha!"

"What?"

"We've got another mouse in the house!"

This time, he ran behind the entertainment system, which is fortunately open. I grabbed the gloves and the box, and we ran around the entertainment system to the opposite corner of the living/dining room, where we trapped him. He cleverly ran underneath a small bookshelf (which Eric and I had to move twice to get him). We finally managed to snag him again, and put him in the box. We speculated that he was the same mouse, because he looked identical. Eric marked his tail with a black marker, so we'd know if he came back.

This time, I took him to the other side of the townhouse complex and let him go. I've not seen him since.