*the future of my home

The battle of my life started about 2 weeks ago. 

I walked down the stairs and rounded the corner that leads to our kitchen and startled a mouse on the kitchen counter.  Upon hearing my shrill scream the mouse was frozen in fear.  Standing on his back legs looking at me, as if to ask what the issue was.  

At this point you might be wondering why I screamed, it is just a mouse after all:

I can't help the scream.  It is located in some overly alarmed spot in my brain.  There are only a few things that trigger this scream in me.  

1. My husband stealthfully walking into a room and speaking to me
2. Seeing a mouse

Anyway, back to the kitchen standoff, the mouse is perched on his back legs, with ridiculously large ears, and beady eyes, peering at me, seemingly more concerned about figuring out why I screamed than doing the decent thing which is to scurry out of my sight.  My body is also frozen and we stand frozen in a stare off for what feels like eternity, the sound of my scream echoing in our ears.

We both regain the ability to move at about the same time, but neither of us know what to do!

The mouse starts to dodge one direction and changes his mind, dodges the other direction (towards the stove) realizes the burner is hot (I was making tea) and he freezes again.  I am really confused at this point.  I have never seen such an aggressive mouse, it will not leave my sight so that I can regain normal function.  

So, I did what any normal person would do at this moment and with the yell of a warrior, I grab the cheese grater on the counter and I throw it at the mouse. After the cheese grater bounced off the coffee pot more than a foot away, I got lucky on the bounce and it landed close enough to the mouse to send him running for cover under the microwave oven.  

I am too exhausted from the battle at this point to keep fighting, and I no longer remember why I went into the kitchen in the first place. I officially had the creepy crawlies, a serious medical condition, so I go back upstairs and order 147 types of mouse bait, mouse traps, poison, little deadly mouse hotels..  As I am checking out on Amazon, the fire alarm begins to go off.   Damn, I forgot the tea water.

Of course now I have  PTSD as I walk down the stairs like I am walking into a war zone to turn off the fire alarm and see if the tea pot can be salvaged.  The bravery I showed was amazing, creeping down the stairs in defensive position as if the mice army was down there ready to greet me.  I managed to turn off the burner on the stove, put the scorched teapot in the sink and silence the fire alarm.  

The battle doesn't end there though:

On top of ordering hundreds of dollars of mouse traps on Amazon, I also called my husband and asked him to buy traps, poison, a gun, and anything else he could think of to resolve this issue.  He's used to me at this point and let's me ramble off the list of things and comes home with poison and a mouse trap.   To which we see very little evidence of the huge army of mice my brain insists we have.

Until yesterday

Yesterday the mouse showed up in my room.  He is mocking me.  He does not care that I can see him, he pokes his head out at will, runs from one side of the room to the other.  As my scream echos through the house, my husband's reassuring voice comes from downstairs..

"Did you see a mouse?", the laughter in his voice barely concealed.  (he is mocking me)

I saw the mouse again this morning, it is now clear that I will have to burn down the house.

It is the only reasonable solution.  That will teach them both.

@whatsup