..Except for a mouse!
Last week, upon arriving home after an all day expedition, we noticed that someone (or something) had helped themselves to the sunflower seeds in our pantry. Neat little holes in the bags, and the hulled remains of seeds were the tell-tale signs that “we were not alone”.
But the day was spent; far too late to travel to town for mouse poison, mousetraps, and other such material. We figured that the varmints probably lived in the crawl space, and they figured out how to come inside the house via the dryer vent hole. So after taking a few precautions such as closing the pantry door, we retired for the night.
The next thing I remember was being jolted awake by a blood curdling scream! It was Mom – “MIKE! COME HERE!!! OH MY GOSH!”
Looks like Mickey Mouse was paying us visit. 
I stumbled out of bed and ran to the pantry, rubbing my blurry eyes. Dad was there, still trying to adjust to the light, and we were soon joined by everyone else. What follows is a bit of our conversation…
“What’s wrong?! What is it?!”
“It’s a mouse! Here in the pantry!”
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know..Somewhere behind that bi-”
“Eeek!! There it is! Don’t let it get away!”
“Let me get a broom for you Dad…”
“You know how funny it would be if the mouse got out of the pantry? We’d all be chasing it throughout the house like crazy!”
“That would NOT be funny.”
“Eeek!”
“Whoa – there it is again!”
“Don’t let him get out – use the full paper towel rolls as a barrier!”
“How are you going to catch him, Dad?”
“Don’t squish him – it’s not a bug!”
“How ’bout putting bucket on top of it?”
“What do you need dear?”
“If I could have a large rag, that would be great.”
“I still think it would be hilarious if we had to chase it all over the house…”
“There it goes again!”
“GOT IT! It’s inside the rag.”
“Now what do we do with it?”
“I’ll just throw it outside here…”
“No! It might come back!”
“He’s too smart, Dad – he’s figured out how to get inside. He knows too much!”
“How do we kill it?”
“We can put it at the other end of our property…”
“No, that’s still too close.”
“Well, we better do something with it quickly, ’cause I need to hit the restroom really bad!”
“How about suffocating it?”
“How would we do that?”
“We can chop off its head!”
“Oh gross…”
“Don’t let go of it Dad!”
“We can drown it, right?”
“Yeah, that might work – get a bucket.”
