It begins on a normal Saturday afternoon, with a quiet, semi-adult, not-a-girl-yet-does-not-feel-like-a-real-woman determined to rearrange her backroom after thinking about possible spatial arrangements all week. So she begins to do so, moving books and the like. As she does so, she happens to faintly notice a bit of a strange smell, but it is not so overpowering that she doesn't think much of it. As she reaches for some books that were previously arranged on the floor, she happens to peer into a corner where a few years ago a mouse trap had been set. To her abject horror she finds that said trap is now occupied - for how long, she knows not - for really it does not matter the length of time that it has been occupied - it is the fact that there is now a deceased mouse in it. And it is huge. Gigantic mouse proportions huge.
This semi-adult woman screams at the top of her lungs and gags at the sight. Distraught she calls her father. No answer. Not that she was really expecting one, for she knows that he is most likely in a tree stand, but was hoping against all hope that perhaps he would come dispose of the dead creature. No such luck - he instead texts her, telling her to put on some gloves and deal with it. She tries to follow her father's advice - truly. But the sight of this huge dead mouse keeps causing her to gag and almost throw up. She then texts her best friend for moral support, who is admirable in her advice and encouragement. Yet, this semi-adult woman just can't do it. Out of options, after calling her mother and brother with no luck, she phones her dear friends the Griffins, who come to her rescue and get the creature and dispose of it. All can finally return to "normal", and the girl returns to rearranging and winterizing her broken window, stuffing & duct taping & plasticing off cracks in case that is how the mouse somehow got in.
As she enjoys the new room arrangement and watches a few movies, time passes into the dead of night. Since she is a semi-adult, she stays up to watch a movie (plus, she wasn't that tired and was having trouble breathing so couldn't sleep anyway). Fast forward to 1:30-1:45am, and she starts to move towards her bedroom, when all of the sudden to her utter disbelief and horror SHE SEES ANOTHER HUGE MOUSE WITH A HUGE LONG TAIL SCURRY ACROSS THE FLOOR IN HER FRONT LIVING ROOM!!!!!!!!!!! Involuntarily letting out a scream, she watches as the mouse quickly does an about-face and DISAPPEARS!
What does she do???? What can she do??? She can't call her parents because it's now 2am. She can't go to her parents house, because it's 2am and her father would probably mistake her for an intruder and shoot her. She certainly can't go to sleep with the knowledge that there is a mouse on the loose with no traps to catch him! So the most logical thing to do is to go to Walgreens, which is open 24/7 and pray to Jesus that they have mousetraps.
In the dead of night, off she goes, zooming down the road to Walgreens, thankful no one can hear the words coming out of her mouth in almost a mantra. The woman on the register is a bit surprised to see someone dash into the store at that hour. Frantically searching the aisles, the semi-adult woman cannot see a mousetrap anywhere, so consumed by fear that her eyes can't work. She finally has to go get the staff person to help her find some, and this kind staff person calmly points them out to her. After checking out, with a good luck from the Walgreens lady, the semi-adult woman makes her way back fearfully into her apartment. She shakingly sets the traps, prays to God the mouse is caught, and climbs into bed, unable to fall asleep because of fear and a bad stuffy nose. Fretfully she turns on her fan and noise machine app so that she won't be woken by the sound of a trap snapping in the night, turns out the light and tries to sleep, which somehow she does. Yet when she wakes in the morning, she is now afraid to get out of bed because what if the mouse was caught?? Worse, what if it still wasn't?!?
She finally musters her courage and gets out of bed, stomping her feet and banging the walls to make loud noises to scare any mice away. She goes outside to grab her shovel just in case there is either a dead body to dispose of or a live one to dispatch. She peers down the hallway where the traps were set, and they are all empty!! This is not a relief because while there is not a dead body to dispose of, it also means there is still a live body somewhere.
And so now she must go through the day, poking piles of laundry and clothes on the floor (because she is a semi-adult), with a broom, praying to sweet Jesus above that the next time the mouse is sighted, it will be dead. Right now, there exists a detente in the former peaceful hobbit hole with the semi-adult woman contemplating how she can construct a Maginot Line/WWI trench like warfare in her apartment to defend against this intruder.
She asks for your kind thoughts. She knows on a scale of 0-10 of the troubles of this world and the current real things her forever friends are dealing with, this might be a 0.005, but when fears of fleas and ticks and furry bodies crawling on you in the dead of night with their mouse fangs are real possibilities, it jumps to at least a 5 in the amygdala portion of her brain. She dreads the moment of the mouse being caught as much as it not being a caught - a classic Catch-22, lose/lose situation.
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