Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Horrors

Just a few minutes ago I was industriously pulling the white laundry out of the washer. I reached with my left hand for another handful and came this close to grabbing a drowned mouse. Yes, folks, I saw that tail drop a bit just in time.

I am throwing this out into cyberspace because I need some sympathy vibes coming my way.

(And Ellen, I'm so very sorry I didn't feel much sorrier for you recently when the same thing happened to you.)

P.S. a few days later. I told Emily that if you want people coming out of the woodwork (heh heh) with sympathy, just post about mice. I had no idea so many had similar experiences, and I have to say the prizewinner is the mouse in the toaster. Now that is worse than in a washer.

The science behind all the mice is that we are surrounded by grass fields where the mice feast all summer long, and then when the fall rains begin they head for shelter. Ours being an old house still has lots of entrance holes despite all our remodeling and other efforts.

Ellen, my rescuer was Steven. Blessings on him.

P.P.S.--ok, Jackie from Grove City wins the absolute, top, super-grand prize with her garter snake in the washer, not to mention in the bathtub and the bedrooms. If someone can top that, I'm not sure I want to hear about it.

23 comments:

  1. (S)He was clean(er).

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  2. Once wonderful use for beer is that mice love to drown in open glasses of it.. I continually get grossed out by the sight and could never drink beer..

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  3. Oh.My.Word.
    Surely you can feel the sympathy vibes from this direction.

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  4. How many more times did you wash that load of laundry? Our load of towels was washed two more times in hot water after my horrifying discovery.

    Sh-sh-sh-shud-d-d-d-er... You have my extreme empathy, not just my sympathy.

    I am curious who came to your rescue on this one. I had to take care of the disposing all by myself.

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  5. wow.
    that does deserve a lot of sympathy vibes!

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  6. Deepest sympathies from western MD. My vocal chords got a work out after discovering one scuttling around in my office lunch basket. I understand the customers in the store stood at attention as well.

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  7. I actually gasped and shivered over this one...ick! I feel for ya!

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  8. You do have my sympathy! But listen to my story! We are janitor at our church and last week my oldest daughter inform me that she saw a mouse in the kitchen. So my husband bought those sticky trap and also set a regular trap. We set them on Monday evening and before we left I had caught two mouse already. I had my husband take care of those. Yesterday was the sewing so I decided I better check the traps before to many ladies come in the kitchen and freak out if I have any more caught. Well I first trap I check had THREE DEAD MICE on the sticky trap and the other one had one on. Here I am I have to be brave pick them up and get rid of them before the church ladies get there. Anyway at least it was at church and not at home! My husband thinks I should take up deer hunting with such a awesome response!

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  9. Eewww! I feel about mice like my Grandma King used to say when she saw a roach in her house in FL, "Why, the dirty, low down creature!" Sympathy coming your way from Wisconsin. Connie

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  10. Sympathy indeed--you certainly have mine. I don't know which is worse--your story or my friend's, she found a drowned mouse in her dishwasher last year. Yuck!

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  11. Oh yes, I once had one fall out of the jeans I was hanging on the line. It does take several years off your life.

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  12. I am so glad you posted this (although not happy you had the experience). When I was infested with mice a few months ago I was transferring a load from the washer to the dryer and barely noticed an *almost-dead* mouse in the bottom of the washing machine, moving in slow motion and almost dead. I felt so bad for the little guy but what could I do? I gently placed him in the garbage can and prayed he'd soon breathe his last....and the clothes? They definitely got washed again, in hot water, with lots of detergent.

    I'm just so shocked this experience was not an anomaly. I guess it makes sense that a mouse would like to hang out in a pile of laundry. And I'm so thankful that for me it was a problem with bags of dog food and not a flood of mice each and every year! I feel for you!

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  13. Sympathy. We put toast in the toaster last week & the smell of burning hair assailed us. Yep. One dead mouse nicely fried between the wires. Honestly, I was a cot case & none of us can bring ourselves to use the toaster again despite all the scrubbing!

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  14. Oh ICK!!!! I think that sums it up!
    Connie

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  15. Sympathy?? Yep, you can surely feel it radiating all the way from Ohio, because here's mine. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

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  16. Oh I can top that...I once reached into my washing machine to pull out our clean clothes only to discover a snake at the bottom of the machine. That particular year, we not only had snakes in our basement, but they were found in the bath-tub and upstairs bed rooms. Jackie Olson from Grove City

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  17. Yuck! I have mouse tales (excuse the pun) to tell too. I was always in fear of a washing machine story to tell, but never had the actual experience. But now that I know it actually does happen, I will probably shiver every time I think of it while emptying my washer.
    -Esther

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  18. I MIGHT be able to top that. How would you like to be innocently folding a bath towel, when suddenly out crawls a very angry 4 1/2 in long scorpion?!

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  19. Hello, Dorcas.

    I've been a longtime reader of your blog, but just felt compelled to comment this time.

    This is the story of a friend of mine, "L".
    L's 9-year-old dd comes in to her bedroom in the middle of the night. "Mommy, I think there's an alligator under my bed." Daddy, of course, doesn't wake up, so L to the rescue. "There is _not_ an alligator under your bed. Go back to sleep." Ten minutes later, as L is drifting back off to unconscious-ville, dd comes back in. "Mommy, _please_ come look, I really think there's an alligator under my bed." L's reply? "There is not an alligator under your bed. Go back to sleep right now, and if you come back, I'll spank you." L goes back to sleep and sleeps the sleep of the righteous. Next morning, L is getting dressed when her husband charges into the room from his venture out to the bathroom. "The alligator is missing from the bathtub!"

    Hubby is a wildlife biologist in one of the Southern States and this was one of his first experiences bringing a gator home. He duct-taped the beast's mouth closed, but "felt sorry" for it and didn't hand-cuff it's front lets like he ought to have. Imagine where it went.

    L apologized to dd. And, I hope, hubby apologized to them both.

    I always think of what a loooong night poor dd must have had sleeping on top of that beast.

    A.

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  20. My greatest sympathies on the mice. I hate mice like no other creatures around. When Bethany way 3 days old, my SIL was there helping me do the laundry and as I came up the basement stairs,there was a chicken snake stretched the whole way across the step and up the wall about 10 inches. I stepped over, thinking SIL had put it there for a joke. She had not. We tried to kill it with a hoe but it got away, up over the edge of the wall. I really didn't want a snake in my basement and I watched my step down there very carefully for a few weeks. He didn't return. Hopefully he at least ate a few mice while he was there! Pauline

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  21. Can you bear one more story? My sister's children brought a garter snake into the house in a jar. Somehow or another it came up missing. For how long, I don't know. They were having company for supper, and my sister made biscuits and had them ready to pop into the oven when she saw the company drive in. When she opened the oven, the snake fell into the hot pre-heated oven from the ledge above the oven door handle. There my sister stood dancing and yelling and not knowing what to do and the poor snake was dancing and writhing in the hot oven! Oh my! Her hubby came to her rescue. As he was carrying the snake out the back door on a stick, in came the company in the front door! Whew!
    --Coleen Sr

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  22. My horror story was like a nightmare come true! Some months ago, I awoke with a strange something on my foot. It was a (over a meter long)poisonous snake in bed with us! Nothing in my twelve years in Central America had prepared me for that experience! Isn't it neat that a sometimes frustratingly passive man can be quick, brave, and decisive when the need calls for it? Me? As I dashed frantically for some tool to kill it, I stumbled over a foot stool and had five bruises on my shins that hurt for days. Sorry, Dorcas, but I'll trade your horror for mine.

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