Oh, BLECH!!!!

Jeremy and I were out in the garage one day among all of our boxes figuring out what to put away next when Abby screamed and said that she thought she saw a mouse run under the stove.  (Remember?  Kitchen renovation...all the things that would have made life really grand were vacaying in the garage.)  Jeremy and I looked around, but didn't give it too much thought, though I REALLY hate mice/rats/rodent family type creatures.  Squirrels (fluffy tail saves them) are ok, but I still prefer they don't invade my personal space... which includes my garage, btw.  As we stood there continuing to discuss the merits of putting away more clothes vs. shelving books, a flash of black and white caught my eye. And then it was my turn to scream.

You know those little internet shorthand words, like LOL and BTW?  Well, there is another one that I won't use under any circumstances, but I must be honest, when I look at this nasty little ugly face with its beady eyes, big nose, bald tail and scratchy feet, it takes everything in me not to shout it to the rooftops on sheer instinct.  Long before I disliked lizards, I LOATHED rodents.

Knowing it was either get rid of the squatter or burn the new investment house down, my sweet husband picked up a bucket and ever so gently coaxed the disgusting vermin into it.  Ok, he tried to do it gently, but it ended up being so not so gently.  It MAY have sustained a little injury to it's backside which had it dragging it's disgusting little rear legs behind it in the pail.  And that MAY have had Abby and I going "AWWWWW'... and being all sad.  (My poor husband having to deal with all these wide swinging female emotions!  Who can keep track or predict what is going to happen next?!?)  At that point, Jeremy was willing to do whatever we wanted.  Kill it or release it.  Neither sounded humane and he was leaving the decision up to us.  While I don't want them anywhere near me, I don't want it killed.  It was in a bucket and no longer threatening.  (There is a directly proportional relationship between my personal space and my desire for something I deem intolerable to die.)  

We decided to leave it in the bucket while we had lunch.  Thankfully during our lunch, he decided his back legs were working just fine, so when it was time for us to leave for our dinner date, we packed him up in the car, bucket and all and took him for a drive.  Far, far away.  I decided I would rather drive and let Jeremy make sure his filthy little charge stayed right were it was supposed to.  If we had been in an accident and that bucket had gone flying... well, we'd have been in another accident!  We dropped him off in the front yard of an empty old abandoned house.  We thought of it more as Jeremy issuing him PCS orders.  See?  Aren't we nice?  Well, maybe not completely.  We MAY have seen a skinny cat lurking across the street, but we figured he had a 50/50 chance of living the rest of his little mousey life in a mousey paradise and being a yummy meal for a terribly skinny kitty.  Either way, win/win, right?  Circle of life.  Circle of life.