This looks like a job for... KITTIES!

[Hyena Dandy]

I was really tired last night, and so I fell asleep in the basement. And then I woke up, to discover something shocking. Surprising.

There was a mouse. RIGHT ON MY NOSE.

Little furry little mouse thing, cute as a button, and it was on my noooooooooose.

Now, I don't usually get all girly gay... Okay, yeah, I do, but I don't freak out very easily. But I totally FREAKED. I yelled, and sat bolt upright. Little mousy goes flying across the room, and I get up, and run to the bathroom to let the cats out.

Sadly, kitties couldn't catch the mouse. Not that I don't like mice, but I don't like them stealing my food.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Aw, poor mousie.

My girlcat brought up a little baby gray mouse once. I saw her with it in the living room and at first I thought it was a hairball because it was the same color as her (which would be odd in itself, since they don't really have a problem with hairballs...which is kinda surprising given how much she sheds). Anyway, as I got closer to her, she got all possessive, picked it up and ran across the room with it. She put it down again and I was able to pull her away before she could grab it again. I thought it was dead but then it rolled over on its back and started screeching. Had to scoop it onto a paper plate (using another paper plate since I was afraid to get bit if I touched it) and bring it outside. I let him go in the landscaping but he was dead when I checked on him a little later.

When I was in high school my brother and his girlfriend found a baby mouse in the basement and managed to catch it under a canister or something. He got out the old hamster habitrail and put it in there. He was the cutest thing...we gave him food but he only lived a few days.

[MsCrankypants]

Hyena Dandy, I feel you. I'm not scared of mice, from a safe distance, but a field mouse ran over the top of my (Birkenstocked) foot once, right over the part between the 2 straps, meaning he ran over my bare foot. I was screaming like a little girl (and yes, I'm a girl). It didn't really help that at the time this happened, there was a bit of a media frenzy over a strain of hantavirus spread by - you guessed it - mice.

Another time, I went in to use the bathroom and happened to spot something odd out of the corner of my eye, by the bathroom door. Apparently, at the exact second I'd shut the bathroom door, a mouse had been trying to squeeze in the gap between the door and the doorjamb, which naturally becomes smaller as you shut the door. I...errrmm...broke its neck and pretty much killed it instantly. Cue screams of bloody murder from me on the toilet, which brought my mom running and pounding on the door to find out what had happened. I finished up and ran out of the bathroom, my mom cleaned up the poor dead mousie (I couldn't handle it), and I still feel kind of horribly guilty about it to this day. And oh yeah - my mom laughed at me, because in my haste to get out of the bathroom, I didn't quite manage to zip up my jeans, so guess whose pants fell down and who almost tripped leaving the bathroom scene of the crime.

Unfortunately for me, I have no cats to help me take care of these kinds of incidents. Which sucks, because the last cat I had was actually a really great mouser and would have taken care of both for me. I'd just have to contend with her bringing them to me as "presents." *shudders*

[RayvenQ]

Hell, I have rats as pets and love them, but i'd still have probably reacted the same way, though i did wake up with a tarantula on my face (bit of a story) and I'm heavily arachnaphobic.

[MsCrankypants]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Tarantula on the face?!?!?! I would die. I'm pretty arachnophobic myself.

[Aethian]

Sorry to our rat lovers but there was one time I had been getting out of a shower at a friends place. I had been warned that the animals know how to use the toilet and to just flush if anything is in there. So I get out and there is a black thing in the toilet. I roll my eyes and push down the lever...and the black thing looks up at me as it swirls down the toilet.

Cue me screaming and running out of the bathroom...sans robe and only towel. Yea...red not only from shock but also embarrassment.

[RayvenQ]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Tarantula on the face?!?!?! I would die. I'm pretty arachnophobic myself.

Essentially, i was stopping over at a friends, i knew he had a taratula and that didn't bother me, it eing nicely tucked away in its tank, what i didn't know is he let it out at nights.

I think that was the first tarantula that damn near broke the sound barrier.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I was the designated exterminator during the clearance swamp's Great Mouse Infestation of 2005-06.

That fall the store got remodeled and one of the overhead doors in the backroom was left open at all times to allow the contractors come and go between the store and their trucks. We figure this is how they got into the store.

And they were all over the place! They got in the bags of birdseed. You'd see them squirming around in them. We had to requisition big Sterilite totes and put the bags of birdseed inside the totes so the mice couldn't get to them.

They were even on the salesfloor. I'm told they got into the checkout candy.

Every time we saw one, I was sent in to catch in. We had an exterminator come in and set traps, but they weren't very effective. Probably because he decided to use primarily glue traps, which are cruel and inhumane, but ineffective. One day I got treated to the hilarious sight of a mouse running around the backroom with its tail stuck to one of those glue traps.

[RayvenQ]

I hate glue traps, just so cruel, if i ever saw someone putting them down, i think i'd plaster their face with them and see how they like it.

Though i do completely understand that rodents, as vermin, need to be dealt with.

[Hyena Dandy]

Exactly.

On the one hand, I love animals, and I hate hurting them. On the other hand, there's a difference between a tame mouse and a wild one.

[RayvenQ]

Gah! I just got attacked by one of my rats, he jumped in my dressing gown

[Cat]

It's not hurting the mouse if you set the cats on 'em....its a nature documentary

[dalesys]

My mother was doing the laundry barefoot in Hampton, VA when she stepped back and felt a crunch "Oh, the kids left out their crayons... Nope, mousie street pizza!"

[MsCrankypants]

Eek! *shudders* I felt bad enough about accidentally crunching that mousie in the bathroom door.

One day when I was about 9 or 10, I was walking home from school with my brother when I kicked over what felt like a large rock on the pavement. Nope. It was a dead baby possum. And no, it wasn't "playing possum," it was just plain dead.

[Cat]

I found a dead snake in my basement last year.....still wondering which cat did it in (there were kitty teeth marks)