Our third roommate.

Being that R and I are native to NJ, we migrate up the coast for the week between Christmas and New Years to see family and get together with our college friends. This happens every year, and every year before we leave I am adamant about cleaning the house. The week in NJ is such a whirlwind that when I get home, the last thing I want to do is unpack. This usually means we get home, order out for 2 days, and generally decompress before getting on with our lives. This also means that there's no way in hell I'm coming home to clean, so we get it done before hand. Simple as that.

Except this year we came home to find that someone had moved in:
or maybe it's this guy:

We've never had a mouse issue before, I didn't think twice about leaving a HUGE bag of unopened dog food in the middle of our kitchen floor. When we got back, I picked up the bag to move it to storage and dog food just started pouring out of the bottom... I checked the bag and sure enough, a huge hole had been chewed right through. I (obviously) screamed - not only did the mouse eat the furbaby's food, he had the audacity to leave his stupid little poops all over the place... including between the stacks of boxes we've packed for the move! I spent the day thoroughly grossed out and cleaned up all the poop.

But, knowing that the mouse most likely didn't know that his food source was gone just yet, we ran out and bought a ton of traps. We set them up EVERYWHERE.... on the kitchen counter, by the fridge, in the maze of boxes... everywhere I could think. That night we caught a mouse. Thank God, because I was thoroughly grossed out.

But the poop kept appearing. Some here, some there. Never a ton, but enough to let me know that our roommate had a brother. So we kept out the traps, kept them baited, a moved them every few days....

Nothing.

At this point, the traps have been out for a full week. The traps haven't seen any action, but the poop keeps showing up. WTF?

Here's the thing... I thought about writing a post about this a while ago, when we first got back, but I didn't want you (all 3 of you) to think that I'm gross, so I held off. I cleaned my mouse poop in silence. I read about the Hanta Virus, which I hope I don't get. I made sure all of the traps were baited. I set up a chair just outside the kitchen, turned off the lights, and sat in silence for an hour hoping to at least catch a glimpse of where our third roommate might be coming from. Nothing.

Until today.

Here I am, at my laptop just outside the kitchen, doing research for a bachelorette party and I hear "the noise". A scuttling in the kitchen. It's not a nervous noise. It's not quick. It's actually very leisurely. To the point when I thought maybe my dog was just nosing around, trying to peek into the garbage. I slowly pick my head up, expecting to see a 55 lb red dog. I see nothing. The noise continues, so I keep looking. And a friggin' mouse trots across the kitchen floor. Trots in a way that says "Bah, your $3.99 Skippy peanut butter is so last year, but this Science Diet chicken and rice kibble is simply to die for, daaaaa'ling". (I imagine this mouse to have a Jessica Rabbit accent, even though I still think it's a dude) So I watch the mouse stop, look around, almost look like he was going to go climb back into the dog's bowl, and then carry on back under the fridge.

Well, Mouse. Your days are numbered. I'd say I was going to kill you, but realistically, I'm just going to continue to clean up your stupid little poops for the next 2 days. And then I'm moving.

And I hope I don't get Hanta Virus.