My Captain and I have some interlopers. Trespassers. Uninvited guests.
Mice.
They have chosen to take up residence in the wall directly behind our bed, under the eaves.
We have two cats. Two worthless furballs. Two lazy, no-good, catfood-recycling balls of fluff and cat spit. Sure, they are cute and cuddly, but they don’t exactly work for their keep.
So we have scratching. And skittering. And strange tapping noises in the middle of the night.
My Captain had had enough.
“I’m going to go buy some mouse-traps,” He declares.
“Don’t kill them!” I beg.
Holy Stinkin Moly….you should have seen the look on his face. Consternation doesn’t begin to describe it.
“What do you want me to do? Invite them to tea?”
I didn’t care for the tone in his voice.
“They’re God’s creatures too, you know.” I was indignant.
I can’t share the rest of that conversation with you because it was muttered under his breath as he was shaking his head, walking away from me. I have to believe it was something along the lines of, “My wife is so adorable the way she loves all of God’s creatures. Golly I am lucky that she is mine.” Yep, I’m pretty sure that was what he must have been saying.
A couple of days later, he came home with some live-trap mousetraps, and put them under our eaves in the wall behind our bed. As I was climbing into bed that night, I didn’t hear the normal chew-chew-skitter-skitter-tap-tap-tap. Instead, I heard a thump. thumpity. thump. Weird. My Captain was already asleep, so I girded my loins and went to check the trap. (Can a woman gird loins?)
Sure enough, we had caught one of the cuties.
I took him down to the back yard and opened the trap door to release him. He wouldn’t come out. No sirreeeee. I shined the flashlight in the trap and his little beady black eyes were SO dagnab cute, I couldn’t stand it. And his wee little ears were at full attention in their round little way on his furry little wittle cutie cuddly wuddly head. Oh he was adorable.
“There you go, little guy!” I whispered, gently putting the opened trap under a bush in the mulch so he could exit whenever it so suited him.
And I went back to bed feeling like I had brought good Karma to our house and our lives in general.
Tonight, My Captain went to reset the trap to catch another mouse. Sure enough, he did.
“I wonder if that is a different one or the same one?” I asked. “Maybe we should paint a white spot on his head or something so we can keep track of that.”
“How on God’s Green Earth am I supposed to do that?”
“With a paint pen, of course.”
(PREGNANT PAUSE while he let that sink in.)
My friends, I cannot adequately convey to you the look of incredulity I received from the love of my life. His perturbation was palpable. He said something about some guy named Job having nothing on him….
I have to tell you, I don’t think he did it. Just between you and me, I don’t think he painted that little guy’s head at all.
But in case he did, if any of you come across a wee little furry mouse with a white paint dot on the top of his head, he’s ours.
Mama Boe 
Pretty much IDENTICAL situation & conversations had here – except that everyone was telling ME to paint their heads & I couldn’t figure out for the life of me HOW to go about doing that! In the end, I captured & released 11 mice, at which point Bruce took over with his not-so-friendly traps – caught 5 & that was the end of it. Hmmmmm…. Pretty sure I was catching the same, sweet, cute, cuddly-wuddly mice – over & over & over. *Sigh* So sorry to kill them, but I WAS pretty tired of mouse poop – EVERYWHERE!!! In my underwear that was in my underwear drawer, around the toothpaste in the bathroom drawer, scattered about the drawer where my make-up was, on my computer keyboard, my bedside dresser where I keep my drinking water at night… Sorry guys! Enough was enough!
Remind me to tell you the story of the field mice out at Hearthside when your dad and I were first married…..if I haven’t already…….
And how I figured out what the little brown things in the bread drawer were……