Gracie's Mouse

So when you live in a house with a partner, or roommate, normally there is some division of labour, either formal or informal.  Mark and I didn’t have a formal arrangement but usually, we both stuck to things we were better at.  Obviously, he was better at cooking than I, I did a better job on the laundry than he would.  Some things though, neither of us were any better at than the other but somehow, one of us would do the lion’s share of it.  For example, I would clean the bathroom and he would kill critters.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Gracie was definitely stalking some prey.  She was bouncing around, a bit like a cat, near the bathroom door and then running down the hallway toward the kitchen.  I soon realized that she was after a mouse.  Imagine, a mouse in the house! This was the first mouse we’d seen since moving back into the house (a few years ago, Mark dismantled a mouse condo in the basement but that’s another story).  Mark believed that whenever we saw a solo mouse, in the daytime that the poor thing probably suffered from intellectual disabilities.  The next day I watched this silly mouse run around the living room, barely escaping Gracie’s reach.


Later that night, we were in the bedroom and she was growling softly and trying to squeeze herself in between the dresser and the wall (not possible).  Frustrated, she would pace in front of the dresser, growling, ears pointed high, tail up.  I didn’t see the mouse but I knew his days were numbered.  Fast forward to last Saturday.  I’m in the master bathroom and I can hear a mouse in the wall.  At this point, I’m pretty convinced that this is just one mouse. I had not seen evidence that there was more than one around and I think he probably got into the house via the doggy door and was not able to figure out that he could leave by the same route!

Again, Gracie was pacing and trying to find her foe.  I sort of forgot about it and went on about my day.  I ended up cooking some chicken in the crock pot.  When it was finished and the pot had cooled down, I was going to put it in the dishwasher.  I decided against it though because the dishwasher was empty and I wasn’t sure I’d not be using the crock pot again before I ran the dishwasher.  I put it in the sink and filled it up with hot soapy water.  Promptly, I forgot all about it and ended up going to bed with it still soaking in the sink (something I NEVER do).

When I got up on Sunday morning, I remembered what I’d done and turned the hot water on, grabbed a scrubber and started to clean the crock pot.  I kept feeling something brushing against my hand and I thought, “wow, that is a big piece of chicken I left in there.”  After a second, I saw a stiff mouse tail sticking up out of the water and realized that our mouse buddy had drowned in the soapy chicken water. 

Gracie’s mouse was well and truly dead!!  I showed her the mouse and she snorted and walked away.  Apparently, when we have to, we can kill the critters too!