If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

So yesterday afternoon I was chillin upstairs doing Sunday afternoon relaxing type activities and Dave went downstairs to do something in the kitchen. He came up a short while later cupping something in his hand and said, "I don't want to freak you out but I have something to show you," which is basically the equivalent of saying, "WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SHOW YOU IS REALLY GOING TO FREAK YOU OUT"

Immediately my mind conjured up images of what he could possibly be holding in his hand, pretty sure I thought it was going to be some sort of creature such as a giant spider or a cockroach or some other unidentifiable bug. Looking back, I only wish that's what it was.

Instead he opened his hand to show me tiny little black things that seemed to resemble Chia seeds. "I found these in some of the cupboards. What do you think these are?" 

And I hesitantly said, "It looks like....mouse poop?"

Then we did what every person living in the 21st Century does, and googled "images of mouse poop", that confirmed that, yes indeedy, one of those horrible, creepy little beings had been crawling through our cupboards scavenging for peanut butter and leftover Goldfish crumbs and leaving lovely little droppings in its wake.

I also ran across this truly horrifying image:

At which point I decided maybe it would just be better to burn down our house and start from scratch because, EW!

Anyway...so Dave went back downstairs to inspect more cupboards and I got ready to go to the grocery store because we were out of groceries and because I had the heebie jeebies just thinking about being in a clearly mouse infested house. When I came downstairs, Dave told me he had more bad news and pointed to a napkin with a pile of mouse poo on it and said, "I found this in the silverware drawer."

People. Mouse poop. In the silverware drawer. Sharing space with the things we use to PUT FOOD IN OUR MOUTH. At this point I was reaching full blown hyperventilation. Then he proceeded to show me the scratch marks he found at the back of the drawer from where they had crawled in (HAVE MERCY!) and surmised that they came from the direction of the dishwasher.

This is where I will tell you that our dishwasher hasn't been working correctly basically since we bought it in August. I've tried not to talk about it too much because, well, FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS. I can and have been washing dishes by hand for several weeks. But I've been super annoyed because we bought the dishwasher BRAND NEW. I feel like, you know, if you pay a decent amount of money for something that has never been used, it should probably work right. We've had the dishwasher repair man come look at it and he surmised that the control panel was broken, but now all I can think about is mice. The mice did something to the dishwasher. Could they have chewed through a wire? Or (gag me!) gotten stuck in a hose or something somewhere? I don't know. All I know is, the two circumstances are suspiciously coincidental.

So anyway. Whilst we were discussing all of these mouse related scenarios, Lily came into the kitchen and said, "There's a mouse in our cupboards? That's...well, that's actually kind of cool!"

Of COURSE she thinks its cool. Because everything we've ever taught her about mice via picture books are that mice are adorable little creatures that wear overalls and sleep in beds made out of matchboxes in cozy little rooms in the walls.

You know...

If you give a mouse a cookie, they'll ask for a glass of milk, and look in the mirror and notice he needs a trim and clip his hair and then sweep and mop the floor for you...etc, etc etc.

No.

Let me rewrite this book for you: 

If you give a mouse a cookie, he will poop it out in your silverware drawer.

The end.