There has been a little excitement of late in our house

Okay, here's the deal. I don't like mice. At all. Not even one little bit. I detest them. They freak me out more than I care to admit.

Which is crazy because what, exactly, can they do to me? A mouse is small, without a poisonous bite and it trends to run away when I get anywhere near them. It just doesn't make sense.

Never the less I am petrified of mice. So yesterday when I walked past the kitchen (where I had just spent the last two hours happily cooking bear foot) and out of the corner of my eye say a tail under the dishwasher, when I made myself turn and look (hoping against hope that my mind was playing tricks on me) and saw a whole mouse disappear under the dishwasher; I did the only logical thing I could think of.

I screamed.

Then I ran into my room and slammed the door shut.

And stuffed a blanket under the door.

And piled a whole lot of books on top of the blanket.

And then I called Dad. Which was a great idea because sobbing (I am a wuss - I admit it) on the phone to someone 4 hours away is really going to help the situation.
It was at that point that I realised that a) I had left the oven on in the kitchen and to turn it off would mean walking right in front of the place where the mouse was last sighted and b) by locking myself in my room I had no idea where the mouse was - I had no idea if it had run into another room or was still in the kitchen.

After Dad calmed me down he managed to talk me through putting a box across the door to the kitchen so the mouse couldn't run out if in fact it was still there (we are not even facing the possibility it was anywhere else). Then I climbed onto the bench top and walked around the benches to reach down and turn the oven off.

Then I ran back into my room and closed the door and added the blanket and books until Joshua came home.

He couldn't find the mouse, but he did find a hole under the dishwasher to outside so here's hoping that it went back there. There have been no other sightings of the mouse. We have set a few traps which basically means that I have to stick my head cautiously into the kitchen and check each trap and look under the dishwasher before I can actually bring myself to climb over the box and go into the kitchen. Where I run like crazy to get what I need before escaping as soon as possible.

As yet we still haven't found it. I'll keep you posted.