Uggh.

If there is a hell for mice, I hope I just sent one there.

Last week, I posted about the rain in our attic over our bedroom, and the subsequent guest room flood. Well, I turned off the water at the curb before leaving on vacation Friday, just in case. I also set a mouse trap in the attic just in case the varmint decided to return...

He came back.

To a different pipe.

Then he went to the mousetrap to partake of his own last supper. Only the mousetrap didn't kill him - it just maimed him.

So we returned from vacation today, turned on the water at the curb, sang in the rain in our living room, turned off the water at the curb, climbed up in the attic, and did battle with a maimed mouse. He was armed with razor-sharp teeth; I was wielding a shovel.

He was laying on the sheet rock - maimed, but still very much alive. I was balancing on attic beams in a 130 degree attic holding a garden shovel and paper sack.

I couldn't beat him with the shovel because he was laying on sheet rock in the attic, and pregnant women don't appreciate mice raining on them from the attic any more than they do hot water at 3am. I couldn't scoop him into the paper sack because he was still alive enough to flop around like a fish, and he wouldn't stay on the shovel. And I wasn't grabbing him... did I mention the razor sharp teeth?

We did battle for about 15 minutes. I don't know if it was similar, or if I was just dehydrated in the 130 degree attic, but I swear I heard him quote Monty Python's Black Knight, "'Tis but a scratch."

Finally though, he succumbed. I thought about skinning him and hanging him in the attic for all his mice buddies to see like the Philistines did to Saul and his sons, but it turns out pregnant ladies aren't much for the stench of rotting mice corpses either. His body is in the industrial dumpster down the street, but his soul (one can only hope) is being judged as we speak...