Car and Mouse

Last night I was watching Forensic Files at 2am and saw the most horrific thing.

Ok yes, that show is like a real life CSI and so yes it does normally have pretty gruesome tidbits. But it has justice!

Also, yes, Sunday night's beautiful sleep was just a tease and I have returned to the land of he less-rested.

Here's the thing though. The scariest part of the show was not the murder. This guy wasn't too sharp so it took until the third, less fancy, attempt to complete his twisted mission. It was attempt number two that made me want to sleep with the lights on.

Turns out his wife, like me, has a fear of mice. So Mr. Not-so-nice-guy puts a couple of the critters in the compartment between the seats where he knows she'll reach to change the music. Next time she's driving she opens it up and whammo, all disgusting-like she has mice crawling all over the car and nearly wrecked. I had to lift my feet off the floor just writing that. Grossness! Can you imagine?!?  It was so blood-curdling a concept I thought I had fallen back asleep and was having a nightmare.

Maybe you haven't had the experience with mice that I have over the past ten or so years, so this doesn't sound all that bad. But after seeing one inches from my feet freshman year of college and having roommates try and fail to humanely trap it in a laundry basket, I've gone full-on anti-rodent and never looked back. Sophomore year we had traps that seemed to attract every mouse in the building to our radiator for a last supper of peanut butter and death. In New York  heaven knows how many sticky trap successes were followed by dropping Don Quijote on their Pathmark-bag-covered bodies. Then there was that time I opened a bag of Chex Mix and saw two beady eyes peering back at me.

Shivers just thinking about it.

This morning when I went to close the oven door I'd left open after baking and eating a tray of  cookies last night (which I think I deserved) I saw a dark spot an inch wide and three inches long. Without thinking I assumed it must be a mouse and jumped back. Yep, a grease spot in the oven. I mistake socks under the bed, shadows in the corner, even J-Man's feet under the covers sometimes, all for those terrifying little creatures. I'm traumatized.

Which is why, after countless episodes, I have found the first that I can categorically say I will never, ever watch again, regardless of my desire for slumber.