It
was snowing when we got up at 7:00. Yes, a white Christmas at Gilbert. Thank
goodness Hallie and Nick left yesterday. Mike said he thought if we could get
up Plank’s Pitch we could make it out. I offered to leave stuff behind for
another trip, but he said the more weight in the back the better. After we ate
our left-over “Christmas Day” waffles for breakfast, we started packing the
pick-up.
Truth
be told, I didn’t unpack much of what we brought in last week – just worked out
of the boxes and baskets. So, yesterday I spent a little time consolidating
this and that and the boxes were good to go. It seems like every bit as much
goes out as comes in. I can never figure that out.
We
left the farm at 9:00 -- three inches of snow and snowing. I didn’t pause to
take pictures. We travelled steadily up Plank’s Pitch without difficulty, but
Mike said he was afraid if we had stayed another day we’d have been snowed in.
The upper half of the grade was snow floor but became slushier as we approached
Orofino. No snow at Lewiston.
Back
at the town house, we unloaded the pick-up and I commenced to unpack. I filled the kitchen sink with
water – and that’s when I spied it . . .
MOUSE
SIGN!!!! NO!!!!! Not on Christmas Eve!
“I
wonder if they got into the pantry,” said Mike. Standing in the open doorway,
he proclaimed, “Nope. No mouse sign here.”
“Oh
yes there is,” I said, elbowing him out of the way. All I had to do was move a
box or two – and there it was.
Cleaning
the pantry is not what I would choose to do on Christmas Eve, but I removed
everything stored on the floor and mopped. Then I removed everything on the bottom
shelf and cleaned. And, of course, I put everything back. And that’s as far as I went today.
Where
is the mouse now, we wonder. And I’m nervous about that. We were successful
some weeks back with a couple of traps, and then we left them out for weeks. I
guess we just thought we had won so we took the traps to the farm, where we
know the war is never over. So, out we went to buy more traps which Mike will
set tonight. Because . . . regardless of what the old poem tells us, if they're here, they'll stir. KW
[Ina took the "panorama" the winter of 1934, a northward view from the farmyard.]
2 comments:
Oh no! And it's spreading - I've been invaded in the house, too. I guess I could not catch enough of them in the chicken house.
Mike set traps at bedtime the 24th and got up to check them an hour later. We trapped one -- haven't seen any more sign. He was ready to put the traps away, but I said I would leave them out in less conspicuous places, one of them being a corner of my sewing room.
I grew up in a big old house in Orofino, and I don't remember mice or the discussion of mice as a problem. Perhaps there were enough cats around to keep the mice away.
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