"the crawler"

Yesterday after coming home from running a couple of errands, I was on the phone with my mom and unloading bags & car seat carrier etc etc.. Audrey ran (her transportation method of choice lately) into the living room to play and came running right back into the kitchen yelling "THE CRAWLER! THE CRAWLER!" over and over again.. Ah HA! I was afraid I knew just what she was talking about - You see, last Sunday Charles brought Audrey to church with him and I stayed home with Will. As I was nursing in the living room a mouse ran across the room and underneath the couch I was sitting on.. OH MY GOODNESS! was that a sight to see - I probably could have won $100,000 on funniest home video but there would have been some blurring to do since I was .. well, you get the picture. I was horrified and called Charles immediately to stop at Wal Mart on his way home and get some traps. He set about five up underneath the armoire and the couch to be safe - I desperately wanted that mouse caught because I knew he was going to be out of town this week... and didn't want to deal with that problem on my own.

I was kind of nervous when he left early Monday morning since we weren't successful on our mouse hunt... would I see the little critter again? or even worse, would I have to deal with a successful trap?? UGH!

To make a long story longer, I immediately knew what Audrey had seen Thursday morning.. a "crawler" was really a mouse.. When she came into the room I guess she scared it, it got stuck to a sticky pad thing and slid out into the open. Now what do I do with it?! I surely wasn't going to touch it.

Ah Ha! my retired neighbor was walking his dog in front of our house so I flagged him over to help with our little emergency... WRONG neighbor to ask.. you see, this neighbor is Mr. Vegan, animal rights activist, all organic, grow my own food kind of guy. He wasn't thrilled that we set an "inhumane" trap up as he said... but I just wanted the thing OUT!

the neighbor asked me to collect a pair of gloves, a basket and a razor blade... I was like, Huh?! all I wanted him to do was to throw the sticky pad, mouse attached in the dumpster - what are all these tools for?! He told me that he wanted to save the mouse and set him free. Beyond surprised I told him that was fine, as long as it was FAR away from my house!! :) He then spent a total of 30 minutes scraping the glue off of the bottom of the mouse's feet and was successful at setting him free.. strange, but true.