What do spiders, snakes, and mice have in common? Our HOUSE :-(

Let me tell you what happened...last night...

We live {sort of} in the country, which means we have the wonderful perks of deer in our  yard, stars at night that we can SEE, beautiful bird song unmarred by the sound of vehicular traffic or people in general…we are truly back to nature.  Getting back to nature has things that I do not consider benefits as well, like snakes, spiders, and mice; unfortunately our home has an over abundance of these three unwanted creatures.  The spiders we had to deal with when we first purchased the home, the house had been vacant for 4 years and we had every species imaginable taking up residence in and around our home.  We were extremely thankful that spiders were our only concern…until a few days ago when our oldest son (16 yrs old) started finding snakes. 

It began innocently enough, a big dead black snake on the road in front of our home.  It soon became alarming when he found two baby copperhead snakes in our yard, one in the middle of our back yard and then last Saturday he found one under our deck…the deck I let our toddler play on while waiting for Daddy to return home from work!  The snake findings has relegated me inside of our home, especially since our lawn mower has bitten the dust AGAIN, and the lawn is getting taller than I am comfortable walking in with slithery creatures around.  Sulfur is on my list of things to purchase the next time I go to Ace Hardware! 

After last night, I have to add to my Ace Hardware list…mouse traps/poison (we have not decided the route we will take at this moment).  Oh yes, my three least favorite of God’s creations have decided MY HOME should be theirs.  Our oldest (poor guy, he might start thinking we are doing this as a hoax on him) was getting ready for bed last night when he came urgently downstairs to get Brian.  I was putting the baby (2.5 yr old is still a baby, right?!?) to sleep when this occurred and the commotion meant Mama had to calm the little guy BACK down before he would snuggle in for the night.  GRRRRR I took the little one up to his crib and could hear Brian and Austin’s voices in the connecting bathroom, quite animated and {to me} loud so I went to ask them to quiet down.  Upon entering the bathroom, I see that they are both gathered around the toilet; Austin has a history of clogging things, so I was not surprised to see them in such a stance.  The alarming thing was that the plunger was still in its place and they are pointing and giggling like schoolboys (oh they will love to hear I wrote THIS in my blog! He he).  A mouse found its way into the toilet; the toilet that my little guy had been placed on not even an hour before to help ensure a dry diaper come morning. 

These creatures are able to produce a massive amount of mouse droppings, and this one was not an exception, unless you consider the fact that it was actually dropping in the toilet (apparently falling into a toilet that you cannot get out of will scare the doo-doo out of a mouse).  The little creature was wet and shivering; I tried really hard to have sympathy rather than revulsion for the little thing.  There was great debate as to how it found itself to be in the toilet.  Since we have ceiling vents upstairs, my guess is it entered through the vent from the attic,  Brian disagrees but has not decided on point of entry, Austin just wishes he could use his bathroom without the fear a mouse will jump out of the toilet onto his…well onto him.  L 

Now, not only do I have the urge to look every time I feel something on me (spider? Eek), but I have to walk in my own yard making noise like a crazy person in hopes of scaring off any resident snakes (sulfur must be purchased SOON), and now we all are going to be inspecting our toilets a LOT more closely before we allow ourselves to utilize the facilities.  The latter will be quite fun during the toilet training phase we are currently in.  JOYOUS DAY!