Monday, October 24, 2011

Of Mice and Men….

And by “Men” I mean teenaged girls…
More specifically…angry teenaged girls.

A few posts ago, I made this statement:

"Mice? Although I respectfully request that they stay outside, and, yeah, I will set out traps and bait to keep them out of my house, you will not find me standing on a kitchen chair screaming my head off if I encounter one. (Okay, so there was one particular incident involving my little sister…but, honestly, that little devil had it coming.)"

The back story is thus:

Many, many years ago, while I was still living in my childhood home, Grandma Ruby came to live with us. As a result, I was promptly evicted from “the pink palace” and sent to the basement to share a bedroom with my younger sister. (No, I’m not bitter…why do you ask?)

Now you should know that for much of our lives my younger sister and I were referred to as ”the girls”. For much of our lives we shared a bedroom. For much of our lives we were dressed alike. For much of our lives we received different versions of the same toys. We were raised as one; and, I’ve said this before, we are variant versions of the same person. Not such a bad thing…like twins, we are connected and share an unspoken communication with one another.

Now, on the fateful night in question, the two of us had just settled into our respective and matching twin beds when we heard it.

A mouse…
rustling around somewhere in our room.

The unspoken decision was to forget him tonight and bring in the “Assassin” tomorrow.

The Assassin was Spook, our very large Siamese cat. Spook was a master at catching a variety of prey, but specialized in mice. He didn’t just catch them and eat them…he toyed with them, he tortured them, and then he ate them.

But, and this is a very big but, the mouse made a very rash and misguided decision. (Probably because he was hopped up on the 50 chocolate candy bars he'd just eaten his way through, which my sister was supposed to be selling to benefit the high school band.)

Picture, if you will, the lights are out, and I’m just about ready to drift away when out of the darkness comes a stream of curse words the likes of which I had no idea my sister even knew, much less would scream at the top of her lungs. Apparently, Mr. Mouse decided that it would be fun to screw with her by running right over the top of her sleepy body.   

(It is interesting to note that in any normal household at least one person might have possibly thought that maybe they should check on us…I mean, seriously, we were not quiet. Perhaps this is why we are so independent…)
 
The unspoken decision…

GAME.ON.

Being the self-sufficient and hardy young girls we were/are we waited and we listened…
And fairly soon it became clear that our little terrorist had taken shelter in the trash can.

What happened next was a symphony of teamwork…

A paper bag was somehow procured and slipped over the top of the trash can.
The trash can was then inverted.
The mouse slipped between the outside of the trash can and the inside of the paper bag.
A pair of scissors miraculously appeared.
The mouse was stabbed through the paper bag.
He was then held aloft, carried upstairs (I think there was chanting), and…
just to be sure…
ceremoniously drowned in the bathroom sink.

From that point forward….
no one messed with…
 “The Girls”.








1 comment:

Betty and Dale Smith said...

I sure won't mess with you "girls"!