Let me tell you a little story

it involves the common household pest.... or rodent, if you will

My first memory of having a mouse in the house was when we lived in Moore, Okla when I was just a wee little girl. In fact, I don't even remember how old I was, but the memory is still pretty vivid. Mom, you can correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I remember the incident that I will affectionately call "Standing on Chairs".

My mom had noticed that "something" was eating through the dog food bag in the cabinet underneath the sink in our kitchen. I can't remember if mom and dad set traps or not, but shortly after she said that I remember sitting at the dinner table (maybe doing homework, maybe preparing for dinner, I can't remember) but my mom opened the cabinet below the sink to get a roll of papertowels (for some reason I remember that she was getting papertowels... weird) and she let out a scream that was made for horror movies, seriously.

She slammed the cabinet door and yelled "Rob, Rob, AHHHHH, Rob get in here. There's a mouse, hurry up!!!!" The next thing I remember was mom, Alicia and I all standing on chairs in the dining room watching my dad chase a mouse around the kitchen with a broom. I don't know if Alicia even knew what was going on, but because my mom was freaking out, so were all of us. I remember her saying "Rob, oh, he's in the laundry room now, oh my.... hurry!" My dad, poor thing, was in there obviously being defeated by this little freak of nature called a mouse. I don't even remember how he finally was able to take the son of a bitch down, but I remember seeing him pick it up and place it in a garbage bag. Gross. I think we caught a few with sticky traps after that because I remember opening the cabinet and seeing one moving around trying to get out of it... uuuugghhh... gives me goosebumps thinking about it. I never saw another one again after that in my parents house and mom and dad made sure their new house in Kansas didn't have a sink on an outside wall. :)

FASTFORWARD TO 2002:
Jared and I had moved into a little house in Pittsburg together. It was a rental, it was one bedroom and it was really old, but we didn't care. We were out of our parents houses, I was out of the dorms, we were together and this little one bedroom shack was all ours and we were happy.

I was on the phone with my mom one day, sitting on the couch watching TV when I glance over towards the front door for a second and I see a flash of brown with a tail run from underneath the loveseat to underneath the couch I was sitting on. (I have to admit, at this moment I realized that I was becoming my mother). I screamed "Oh crap, oh my God, I just saw a mouse run across the room". So, I do the only thing I know to do, and stood on the couch shrieking on the phone to my mom. Pretty sure she couldn't even understand what I was saying. I was freaking out. At that moment, Jared walked in the door. What a sight I must have been... standing on the couch, totally freaked look on my face and a phone to my ear. "I just saw a mouse!!!" I tell him. he said, ok and walked around like it was no big deal. TIMEOUT: Seriously, why does it not seem to bother men that little disease carrying rodents are running amuck in the house? TIME-IN: So, we get traps, we get sticky traps and we get steel wool to fill around the pipes going in and out of our house. Apparently, we had the Harvard Mouse (or Mice, hell, there could have been more) because we never caught that little demon. He would eat our cheese, lick our peanut butter and avoid our sticky traps of death. Eventually, we put out poison and were convinced that when we packed up and moved in a few weeks that we would find a dead mouse. We never did. Still boggles my mind to this day. He must have escaped, but it still baffles me.

Well, amid all of this excitement, my mom purchases us a Ridex thing for our house. I have no idea what the magical powers are behind this little device, but once I plugged that thing in I have never once seen a mouse in any place I have lived since!!!!

FASTFORWARD TO MARCH 2008:
We are finishing loading up our moving truck for Indiana. Jared points to our ever faithful Ridex and asks if we are taking it with us. I said "well, since this place may sit empty for a while, I would rather it be here so we don't have a mouse infected house while we are trying to sell it". He agreed and we left it there.

FASTFORWARD TO ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO:
Jada was acting weird. Constantly laying in front of the stove staring underneath it. We couldn't figure it out. We said either she had knocked toys under there or she was staring at a mouse, which we kinda laughed nervously about. Jared checked under the stove and no mouse, but he put some sticky traps under there anyway and we kinda forgot about them.

FASTFORWARD TO YESTERDAY:
Hicks is standing in the kitchen and says "do you smell that? something smells rotten?" For some reason, I didn't smell it. But Jared said he had smelled it the other day. They start investigating the kitchen. I said... "um Jared, didn't you set traps under the stove?" OH MAN... yeah I did. With some further investigation, they found a dead mouse underneath the stove stuck in a sticky trap. YUCK! I couldn't even be in there and even if I was I would probably have to stand on something because that is what us Drennan's do! :) It was gross and made me sorely disappointed in Jada's mouse catching abilities. She is way to spoiled now to remember how to hunt, apparently.

So, point is.... I need to get another Ridex cause at my age, and my weight these days, standing on chairs may not be a great idea. :)