Some stories

Lumps and Bumps

With Dozer less than a month away from his 10th birthday, I've become super-paranoid about his health. Most recently, I observed two new lumps under his skin, and went into a panic.

He's prone to fatty lipomas, which are harmless lumps, so I should have realistically determined that these were likely just more of the same. But no, I obsessed. Every day, I poked at them, and made Byrd poke at them, and talked about how large they were getting, and how they could be cancerous.

Several days of this was enough to work Byrd into a panic as well, and he finally told me to take Dozer to the vet and get the lumps checked out.

So I did, and sure enough, they were just a couple of lipomas. And small ones at that; the vet had trouble finding them, and when I ran my hand over the spots and guided him to the lumps, he muttered, "Geeze, you're good at finding these."

Okay, so maybe I sit down with my dog every single night and give him a thorough rubdown for lumps and scrapes and other things. I'm sure that's something every dog owner does, right? Right?? I'm not obsessed. I just care. A lot.

The Mouse in the House, Part V

If you recall some months ago, we had a mouse in the house, that caused a bit of chaos. Well, technically, Byrd caused the chaos by tearing the kitchen apart.

After that mouse, we saw signs of another mouse in the house (mostly in the form of chewed-on fruit in the fruit bowl, and Star barking into the kitchen late at night), so I put the live trap out on the counter. Sure enough, within a few days I had a mouse in my live trap. Then a few weeks later, another. Then another. Each time, I walked out to the far corner of the yard and let the mouse free.

Every one of these have been little Deer mice or Texas mice--cute little field mice with big round eyes and chubby bodies. They aren't the big, slinky, traditional "house" mice. We've never had a mouse problem prior to this year, so I started wondering where on earth all these mice are coming from. And why were we only getting one at a time?

Last night, I investigated a racket coming from the kitchen and discovered that the mouse trap had been tripped yet again. And this was no placid, terrified mouse. This was a lively one. The trap was scooting all over the counter.

I carried the trap out to the front yard, rather than the back yard, and flipped it open. Another Texas mouse. When I dumped him out into the flower bed, he sat there and stared at me. His look said !@#$@# It's cold out here. I went inside, set the trap up on the counter out of habit, and went back to bed.

Four hours later, the trap was alive again. I stood there in the kitchen, at 4 am, in my bathrobe, and watched the trap jiggle across the counter. I'd never caught two mice in one night. Much less two very brazen, noisy ones.

Then I realized that there was a distinct possibility that this was the same mouse. It certainly had the same spirited personality inside the trap. It also knew exactly where to go for delicious peanut butter.

In fact, how probable was it that all of the mice I'd caught thus far were in fact the exact same critter? It would certainly explain how each new mouse seemed increasingly familiar with the nooks and crannies of our house. It would also explain this mouse's lack of timidity around (and inside) the live trap. And it might even be the reason why I caught this mouse in record time--because he already knew the fastest way back inside.

So this time, I left the mouse in the trap until morning. In the morning, Star and I went on a walk.

Star carried the mouse trap, with the mouse, in her backpack. I found it incredibly ironic that the mouse she always tried so hard to corner was now actually a foot from her face.

Totally oblivious to the fact that she's carting around her nemesis.

 

"Achoo!! What smells like rodent?"

We walked a quarter mile down the street, to the cow fields at the edge of town. From here, there was no way in hell that this mouse was going to find its way back to my place. I put Star in a down-stay and opened the trap at the cattle fence. It was a beautiful day, sunny, with a breeze, and the smell of cow patties and hay wafting across the thick grassy fields. This is where a Texas mouse should live.

But the Texas mouse had other ideas. He refused to come out of the trap. I knocked the trap on the ground until he tumbled out. He whipped around and raced between my legs, then started climbing--up my pants. His fur was matted with peanut butter and he looked desperate and pitiful. I knocked him off my pants into the deep grass, grabbed Star, and ran out of there before the mouse could jump into her backpack for the return trip.

Star either did not notice the whole affair, or did not care. She was in 100% Angel Mode for some reason. I'm lying down, being good... The grass smells like cow... Why are you jumping about? What? Are we leaving already? Make up your mind. Yes, okay, I'm getting up. Ow, hang on, I've got a burr in my paw.

And we walked back home, with me checking the backpack occasionally to make sure we didn't have a rodent hitchhiker.

Class and Work

There's no story here. Two jobs plus two math-based (blargh) college classes plus website duties make Jen a dull girl. The good news is that I'm working from home for both of my jobs (for now), so I don't have to waste time on a commute, and I can juggle priorities easily.

That's also sort of the bad news, because I have a very hard time putting down the work in order to do normal things like eating and sleeping. The work is always there, calling to me, and I have to leave home to get away from it.

To be fair, I didn't invite it in

Text exchange between me and Byrd

Me: Sad to report we have another mouse in the house. I think bcause no sheetrock in back room. Critters wander in from outside.

Byrd: bs they think its a flop house after seeing u bring in all these animals

Well played, sir.

In other news, the puppies are in the dangerously adorable stage, so no photos right now. Your eyes will bleed and you will vomit. They are just that cute, and I don't want to be responsible for your medical bills. Photos to come, later, when they are less cute.

If you recall, or you may not, I am taking a series of prerequisite undergrad courses as I apply for grad school in pursuit of an MPA. The prereq courses are intro to accounting, microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics. Sounds fun, right? (Barf.)

Summer semester is over. The accounting professor said to me "I don't know why you're in this class." Possibly because the students were asking me to tutor them. The microecon professor told me (ironically) that I should be a proofreader, because I kept emailing her with corrections to the quiz questions. Hey, I ignored the minor typos and whatnot. I only sent her the major problems, like answers that were, um, totally wrong. Anyway, I made an A in both classes, hooray.

Fall semester starts next week. I will be in a statistics class and macroeconomics. Both are online courses. The macroeconomics course has already opened for the more ambitious folks, and I was very excited to see that the first 4 of 12 chapters are identical to the first four microeconomics chapters. So I will only have to read 75% of the total material, since I remember 25% of it from last semester. Yay!

I am biding my time waiting for the graduate school application to open up. I can't even start on it until next month, and then I won't know if I'm accepted until January or something, and then I don't even start the degree until Fall 2011. Argh! Impatient!!

Next Tuesday I take the GMAT. I'm ready for it. I think. I hate the math part. But I generally do well on standardized tests, and I never did learn how to study for things like this, so I'm not stressed. I don't know what to be stressed about. Ignorance really is bliss!

Mouse in the House

We acquired a mouse in the house. It was not a boring old house mouse with little beady eyes and a slinky body. It was an adorable mouse, because it had enormous doe eyes and a soft round body. I think it was a Texas Mouse.

Byrd spotted this cute little creature late one evening as we were getting ready for bed; it scurried under our dishwasher as he entered the kitchen.

One flashlight, two screwdrivers, and several minutes later, we peered under the dishwasher and saw the furry little thing staring at us like a deer in headlights. I love deer, and I love little fuzzy things. The giant eyes on this little mouse seemed to plead "Help me! I shouldn't be here! I want to be outside but I can't find the way out!" Byrd thought the mouse's gaze was much less innocent and adorable, apparently, because he immediately decided to rip the dishwasher out.

I interjected with a bit of reason before Byrd went all out. I proposed to place a cereal box along the baseboard of the cabinet so that if the mouse ran out from under the dishwasher, it would run into the box. Then, a second cereal box (flattened) could be lowered over the opening, trapping the mouse inside. The box could then be stood up and taken outside where the mouse could be released.

I set up my cereal box immediately.

Byrd did not approve. In fact, he made fun of my box idea. It was not action-packed enough, I guess. Furthermore, I was a tree hugger for wanting to save the mouse. But in exchange for nonstop mocking of my box trap, he consented to catch the mouse alive.

Byrd's plan: Rip the dishwasher out of the countertop. Use the vacuum to suck up the mouse. Take the vacuum bag outside and cut it open, allowing a half-suffocated mouse to stagger meekly away.

Needless to say, I saw a lot of flaws with Byrd's plan. Undaunted, Byrd got started.

As our kitchen became more and more unusable, I dryly observed that Byrd was doing more damage and disruption than the mouse was likely to do.

But the dishwasher finally came out. We looked behind it. The mouse had smashed itself into the farthest corner, hiding in terror. In this picture you can see its little butt sticking out from behind a piece of 2x4.

Here is the video of what happens next. Basically, Byrd decides he can shove the mouse into a milk jug. And guess what really happens? (Warning! There's profanity!)

I am sad to report that the camera wasn't angled properly to catch the exciting conclusion, during which the mouse ran into the box for a SECOND time, and Byrd--whose middle name is Impatience--failed to follow my plan as outlined, e.g. by covering the box opening before picking up the box. The mouse therefore leapt from the top of the box as Byrd was moving the box upwards through the air, with the net result that Byrd practically threw the mouse on me. And there was much more screaming.

The newly emancipated mouse quickly found a hidey-hole under the oven. The oven, unlike the dishwasher, could not be torn out of the wall, much to Byrd's disgust and frustration. And that was where the evening's adventure ended.

The next day, I quietly set a mouse-sized live trap up in the kitchen, along the baseboard near the oven. It is a plastic box that tips shut when a mouse goes in; there's peanut butter in the back end as bait.

I am pleased to report that it worked as intended (albeit a few days later), and shortly thereafter I tumped a disoriented, peanut butter-covered, owl-eyed mouse out of the trap into the grass in our backyard. He was gone in a blur.

(The dogs, by the way, were useless throughout the whole event. They slept through most of the kitchen chaos, including the screaming and cursing tirades. Some days later, Star brought the live trap to my side of the bed at 3 am, when the mouse got trapped inside... though her intent was to chew into the trap, not to alert me or anything helpful like that.)