Eek a gigantic rabid disease machine

Laughing Boy and I decided to buy a house a while back. Timing wise, it was about a third of the way into the insane uptick in house prices, so yay us not being completely priced out of the market.

So the house is great, for a 60'’s ranch house. Translation: stylistically boring as hell, but closet space up the wazoo.

My last house was 800 square feet and change, and only 20 sqare feet of that was closets. Enough closet space = nirvana.

The only possible downside to the new abode was a mouse in the garage.

Now, if I was going to spend all that money on a house, I wanted a two car garage with an automatic garage door opener. Because at the advanced age of 40, what with one thing or another I have never been able to drive into my own garage and park a car.

The "one thing or another"” being an ex who considered the inevitably tiny one car garage the place to store any non-running cars, motorcycles and motorcycle parts, sail boats, kayaks, carpentry tools. bicycles, camping gear, cardboard boxes full of broken camping gear and carpentry tools that don'’t work, but you never know when you'’ll need the parts off them to fix a working piece of whatever. Or something. You know, garage as prelim-rest-stop before the dump-run-that-never-happens.

So I was pretty excited that this house had a two car garage, and an automatic garage door opener. Because, hey, even if the inevitable junk moves in, we could just pile everything on one side, and park on the other. Right?

But I was not so excited about the mouse. And so, as long as he stayed, I never really pushed the "parking in the garage" idea.

Now, I'm not scared of mice in the way that I'm scared of, say, black widow spiders or cockroaches. Or of those huge flying dragon fly things that dive bomb your face as you step out of the airport in Florida. Give me an earthquake any day over prehistoric giganto-bugs dive bombing my mouth. Out here in the summer we have June bugs. I know I just mentioned the not dive bombing my face thing, so I won't digress except to point out that HEY, I WAS SLEEPING! And NOT IN THE MOUTH! Ugh.

The mice I have had the misfortune of running into, on the other hand, have been the one at a time variety, waaaaayyy over there. So we can ignore each other seeing as I am visually challenged and they are usually hiding.

Until.

Until the day that Laughing Boy and I decided to clean out the garage.

We'd been keeping the huge bags of dry dog food out there, in a plastic garbage can with a lid. The mouse had become irritated with not being able to get to the yummy Lucky Charms(tm) scented dog food, and had tried to chew through the plastic. Laughing Boy sensibly pointed out that it was time for the mouse to go. Wanting to be a good sport, and eager to actually park in the garage for which I had ponied up a butt load of money, I offered to help.

"Cleaning", if you need a translation, mostly consisted of moving huge piles of stuff from here to there, and then to over there instead. Along the way we found lots of signs (read: poop) that the mouse used to be there. But no sign that he'’d been there recently. So I was pretty relaxed as I pulled the final box out of the final cupboard.

"“Hey, I guess the mouse lef... AAargheeeee AArshe3eogsn,dflkajshd1!!! Aaaeosejrlkammvoisd!!! aaahhhjekwr!!!

The mouse, who was hiding in the final box, lept straight out of the box INTO MY FACE, and then made his escape DOWN MY ARM AND ACROSS MY HAND.

In case you missed it the first time I capitalized the sh*%t out of it, HE BOUNCED OFF MY MOUTH!

By the time I stopped screaming, the mouse was long gone.

A couple of hours later Laughing Boy, who had soldiered bravely on alone while I sulked in the house, came to report. He had captured the face-jumping mouse, and he was the cutest thing. The mouse, not Laughing Boy. Although he is too.

So I went to look, and there, in the very bottom of an empty metal garbage can, peering up at me, was the cutest gigantic rabid disease machine you'd ever seen. Not the tiny itty bitty house mouse I'd expected, but a comically big eared, huge-eyed field mouse. Blinkity blink blink, "haven't you seen a Disney(tm) movie lately" cute.

I, being the hypocrital death-delegater that I am, and the Hanta virus being what it is, slapped the lid on the garbage can and wrapped about eighty eleven bunggee cords around it. Then, I stuck it in the back of my pick up and drove the mouse out to the scrubland just outside the Angeles National Forest. Where I released him into the wild to frolick and be free. Or be eaten by a rattlesnake, hawk, coyote or barn cat. Whatever.

'Cause I'’m humane.

But karma is cranky female dog. Because almost imediately, practically before the Lysol(tm) dried on the garbage can, Laughing Boy'’s mom showed up with a bunch of stuff he'd left behind when he moved out of Arizona, and I still can't park in the garage.

Somewhere, a mouse is laughing its rabid ass off.