Jen's Mental Scribblings

We have this infestation of ROUSs in our garage (so we thought). We put out traps, no dice. After a week we called a professional. He put out traps and sprayed a couple of things outside. After a week he came back out to see how things were doing. No ROUSs caught. He re-baited the traps and left in a cloud of cigarette smoke (no he didn't smoke around us...but Man it was seriously lingering). Grumble, Grumble, grumble.

This morning I went out to the garage and found one of the sticky traps we had put out a couple of weeks ago loaded with 2 mice. Eww. Oh. And they were still alive. Double Eww! I had Joe double glove himself and he took the trap out to the garbage (Hopefully the heat got the little guys. Awfully cute. I don't want them to suffer, just go away!)

This evening I went into my bedroom to put something away. I turned from where I was and saw a mouse sitting on the floor as calm as could be. Peanut came in and it didn't even budge. Okay, one dead mouse in my bedroom ewww. I shut the door on Peanut just in case and found something I could trap the mouse under (flower pot liner). I got it over the mouse, it woke up a bit and started to squirm a bit while I yelled for Joe. He came in and saw what I was doing and ran out to the recycling to get a piece of cardboard. We successfully slid it under the wee beastie, took him outside and tossed him in the garbage with his friends.

Now. Here's the real "Ewwww" I've not yet seen any activity of rodents anywhere else in the house other than the garage. So where in the hell did he come from????

Now. Here's the irony. Elli and Gwen are asking for a cage and a couple of pet mice for their birthday. I don't think so.

After waiting 6 weeks (!!!!!) PG & E finally came out and took out the e-meter and installed the one that can run in both directions...and I got to turn on the solar panels. After being on for an afternoon...its in the negative!!! This is so cool!

I was outside playing with the kids today for most of the afternoon. Between 4 & 5 I noticed that it was getting hazy, and the sunlight was turning orange....it felt more like fall sunlight, than height of summer sunlight. By 7 it looked like this


This is from our backyard looking southeast.


This is also from our backyard looking north. We closed up the house and cranked on the A/C right after (before?) I took these...with that much crap in the air, I didn't want to trigger an asthma attack. allanh and his lovely husband Randy came over for dinner and told us the fire was somewhere close to the 9 in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  At least we don't have to worry about the fire reaching us...but the sky looks AWFUL.

I have beautiful couch cushions!

But no couch.

Must look into this.