Did you know that mice like chocolate?

Well, at least ONE does, that I know of...the one that took up residence on the bottom shelf of my pantry while I was gone in Lexington! I started seeing the signs that I had company in the kitchen last week - you know, the little black mouse turds scattered innocuously in the corners, or behind the flour cannister. But I never saw a pattern, found a source, or noticed anything that had been nibbled on by a rodent. That is, until last night, when I was craving chocolate and I dug through my junk food shelf to find my bag of chocolate...only to find that the Ziploc bag had 2 large, ragged holes in it, and was filled with shreds of paper and foil, but there was hardly any chocolate left! Grrr...now I HAD to do something about that mouse, because it ATE MY CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!! (It must have been a girl mouse, to only have eaten the chocolate, out of all the other things it had access to...and, I must say, one with good taste, because she had gotten through almost all of the dark chocolate, but hardly touched the candy bars.)

Needless to say, I couldn't go to bed last night with the choco-holic mouse still on the loose in my apartment...my mind just wouldn't stop thinking about it! I had removed all the food from that bottom shelf, and I could hear its frantic search for chocolate across the now-empty expanse, even searching in the bag of empty plastic shopping bags, which I kept down there for the noise factor. I thought that if I didn't at least TRY to trap that mouse, I would have nightmares about finding that mouse crawling on me while I slept, or nibbling at my toes, or having taken up residence inside my mattress. But by that point, any stores around here were closed, dashing any hopes of running out and buying a mouse trap! So I improvised, and used my handy-dandy, get-into-anywhere-in-the-gym key to let myself into my office and steal the mousetrap I knew we still had from last summer.

After I baited the trap with peanut butter and a few chocolate chips, I crawled into bed, but I knew my adrenaline was pumping way too much for me to sleep. So I tried to read for about an hour, half-listening the entire time, until I heard some rustling, followed by a loud snap, and then some more rustling that I thought was the mouse running back into its hiding place after a close scare. But I was afraid of what I would find if I went out and looked, so I just stayed in bed and read for a while longer, then ended up dozing off with the light on, then slipping off into a deep sleep. Of course, this morning, the first thing I did when I got out of bed was to check that trap, and sure enough, there it was, caught in the act, never to steal chocolate again...I must say, I did feel a little bit bad for its death, as I took it out of the trap and wrapped it up in a plastic bag and put it in my garbage can. But, hey, at least now my chocolate's safe! :)

(P.S. - Don't worry, I won't post any dead mouse pictures...But I WILL put up some pictures and an update on the Lexington missions trip with my youth group very soon! I just have to wait until Pastor Don burns me a CD.)