Rodents

Websters: belonging or pertaining to the gnawing or nibbling mammals of the order Rodentia, including the mice, squirrels, beavers, etc.

Amy: a group of small pain in the behind critters that mock me continuously, even in death

I don't like them. No, that is too nice. I despise them. I hate them. I want to kill them all. I am not normally a violent person, however rodents bring out the worst in me. And blogland lets me vent. So you have to listen.

It all started as I went to take Jess to ballet today. We were running late, looking for her ballet slippers, which were not where they were supposed to be. So, we piled into the car and backed it out of the driveway, when I noticed an unusually strong stench in my car. I could barely breath and decided that another mouse had gotten into my car and decided to die there. So, put the car in park and proceed to look under all the seats. Nothing. We proceeded to go to ballet. I realized quickly that it was coming through the air condition vents. Turn off the air. Over 90 degrees outside. Turn the air back on. Try not to breathe. Turn the air off. Put the window down. Hot. Noisy. Yucky smell coming from my vents. WHY ME??? I call Dad.

"Something died in my air conditioning in my car."
"Well, it's probably in the air cleaner, so take off the cover and look inside." (He thinks this is easy for everyone!)
Okay, I will have Scott take a look at it when I get home."
Scott arrives at the gas station shortly after I do and I lift the hood and we start to poke around. Don't see the black box that Dad swears is in there.

"Hi, Dad, what are you doing tonight? I will make you dinner...oh, you don't eat dinner, well, how about breakfast? Oh, well, I will look in the engine and call you back when I get home."

So I get home, take apart big parts of my engine that don't look like they should be removable and find a big duct that has a fan at the end of it. Upon closer look, I find a dead mouse in there. So that's the little bugger stinking up my world. Couldn't he die someplace else? Scott gets home as I am donning the gloves to do the extraction and he says, "Let's suck him out", so he gets the shop vac out and sucks up the mouse. Done. I call Dad back. "We got him, the car is rodent-free." "Yeah, I knew that's where he'd be." "Well, Dad, that is why I called you. Thanks."

And I didn't invite the mice. There is nothing in my car except papers. And only a couple of days worth of mail.

And, by the way, there's another gopher.