critters

most people that know me pretty well know that i love critters. i have had many, many pets and... critters over the span of my (nearly) 23 years. i have had... 6 dogs (in chronological order: samson, pepper, toto, tiggy, punkin, and rufie). tons of fish. a couple salamanders. several lizards. multiple hamsters (including the infamous big mama and her litters of babies. err.. the one litter that survived her blood thirst :( ) frogs. an ant farm. lightning bugs (can i count those?). aaaaand that MAY be all... (susan and i kept two baby squirrels alive once for a few days. but they had fallen from their tree and had too much internal bleeding to survive. but i remember we scared a lot of women at church when they asked us what was in our bowl covered with a towel. we HAD to bring them to church because we fed them cat's milk formula from a bottle every few hours. i think almost all of the ladies we showed screamed, actually. they were ugly, bald little things. ha. and we changed their names every few hours. romeo and juliet. chip and dale. you name it. and it was probably one of their names at some point.)

well... the actual point of all this was to prove that i love me some animals! critters, even! unfortunately, i have had to draw the line somewhere. and this line was drawn just the other day. i was in our bathroom getting ready for school when i heard a somewhat disturbing sound. *shuffleshuffleshuffle* i stopped. i listened. and i KNEW. only one thing makes that sound. and it sounds like it's coming from underneath our vanity. for SOME reason... i got -really- brave. and slowly opened the door to the cabinet. and there he was. looking straight at me. he said "hiii!" and then scurried down his little hole. i said "hmm." and closed the door behind him.

i got even more brave later to look at the damage. he pooed on our toilet paper! i am a nutrition major and we talk about things like health safety! and we can't go about using toilet paper already used by a mouse! they carry diseases and microbs. so i tossed out the damaged toilet paper. removed all my sponges and tampons. and hairdryer. (ew yuck). and am pretending like our little mousie friend never saw those things.

i told charlie punkin had invited some friends to come live with us and to please, take care of them quickly.

and yesterday.
we caught 3 of them.
in less than 8 hours.
are there statistics on this??
that means we must have like 1000 living under our dear little trailer.

ew. i must draw the line somewhere.

oh. and we have fireants, too!!! coming in through our kitchen window. about 4 times a day charlie sucks them up with our vacuum. but they always come back. no matter how clean our kitchen is!

i have to draw the line somewhere. sorry mousies. sorry ants. you didn't make the cut.