Of Mice and Women

This weekend I \excitedly bolted from the house in a flurry of happiness begrudgingly left my family and home to go on a weekend long scrapbooking retreat with a gaggle of "my girls". Although it thrilled pained me to leave my family and be 'me' for a few days, I sucked it up, went and tried REALLY hard to have a good time.

Luckily, it didn't take much effort to do just that. Shortly after I arrived, the Queen Scrappy-Chick came around and mentioned that with spring awakening, it also meant that the 'critters' (AKA- RODENTS!!) were awakening too, and that it was quite possible that we might encounter one of these said creatures. HOLY. SHIT! No big deal. I mean really now, we're all mature and responsible adults. We can certainly co-exist with a little mouse, right?!

WRONG!

A little while later, one of the other gals on the same floor as us walks over to use the cricut machine. Next thing you know, she screams and jumps onto the table. Within seconds pretty much the entire room of ladies had screamed and was either ON their chairs, or had their feet in the air. Well, everyone except me of course, because I'm always cool, calm and collected. Did you just laugh right out loud?! Yeah . . . I thought so. I'm woman enough to admit that I probably screamed louder than anyone else and almost peed my pants in fear and had leapt up unto my chair. Why? Because Mickey Mouse ran across the room. I saw him as he ran willy-nilly across the floor. He was HUGE. We're talking MASSIVE - like the size of a horse. And his fangs? They were dripping blood, and he was looking for his next meal. We were on the defense. Everytime someone stood up to go somewhere, we stomped our feet in an effort to scare Mickey enough to stay right where he was hiding (and we sure as hell hoped and prayed that he wasn't moving into any of our luggage. Or beds). Thankfully, none of us saw him again that night, and eventually, Mickey was just a faded memory in our minds.

Well, until the next night when I stood up get a snack and that damn mouse scurried across the floor again. Because I'm all brave and such, I simply gasped and gave a little squeal (as I ran for my life in the opposite direction). I guess you could say that we were almost 'immune' to the mice situation; because we're all adult and mature and all. We were definitely on edge, but had all pulled up our big girl panties and were coping well enough.

A little while later, the Queen Scrappy-Chick was coming up the stairs. Suddenly SHE gave a squeal; a sound that immediately screamed out that there was a mouse. We all basically froze in place and Queen Scrappy-Chick hollers out for someone (anyone!) to bring her a bucket or container. There was a mouse right there in the middle of the stairs. Several ladies braved the battlefield and sought one out. Quickly a large bucket was found, and again, we pulled up our big girl panties and went to watch Mickey consume yet another human sacrifice support our hero as she caught that mouse and humanely removed him from the premises. Or in my case, to videotape it. I admit, the portion that I actually recorded is right at the end of the capturing process because I was maintaining my the mouse's dignity (because I wasn't screaming at all. Nope - not me. Not at all. I'm a big girl and I don't do silly stuff like that). That HUGE mouse was in fact itty bitty, but as they tried to coax him into the bucket (funny, he wasn't just 'jumping' into it like we wanted him to), he kept running from one side of the stair to the other. And us ladies kept screaming and squealing with his every move. Honestly, it was almost shameful (not quite, but ALMOST). FINALLY, with the assistance of a shoe, they finally got Mickey into the bucket, and Queen Scrappy-Chick ran for her life casually and calmly walked outside and threw the mouse and bucket as far up the river as possible carefully released the mouse outside. She became the hero of the weekend.

Funny how such a teeny, tiny little rodent can create SO much hub-bub. For the rest of the night, everyone was on high alert. Every little sound or movement had everyone lifting their feet right off the ground and closing all zippers and cases; because even though we saw that one critter get removed from the building, we're all pretty smart to know that if there's ONE mouse, then there's probably 10 others. BUT . . . thankfully, we didn't see any others. PHEW!

SO, moral of this story?! Mice are icky, and almost every woman agrees.

PS: If I can figure out how to upload a video from my phone, I will definitely share the movie with you all. It IS funny!