Thursday, March 05, 2009

Farm Drama Trauma

It's been a while since I've had an OMG moment.  It's been building, I think.  Fortunately for us, the mice planned things poorly.

See, when you time a critical sabotage operation, you have to carefully observe the habits of the humans (check,) make sure all mousey watches are synchronized (check,) and put your plan into operation so that the sabotage will be noticed only after considerable damage will have occurred.

This is where the mice ran into a snag.  Although they had the time correct (10pm, humans going to bed or already in bed, mwa ha ha!) what they didn't count on was that the water (!!!!)(&@#H%!!!!) would divert onto the boy's bedding, thereby alerting the humans with an unexpected puddle on the blanket which then dripped onto the floor.  (No futon was harmed in the process of this operation.)

"Hey mom," the boy human said, "there's water dripping into my room from your room."
Seek and mitigate protocols went into immediate effect.  There's no water source in the adult female human's room, therefore, she correctly deduced it must be coming from the kitchen.  Her keen ears perceived a hissing noise.  Not behind the fridge, not behind the kitchen linen drawer, not behind the oven, not behind all the canned food (grr!) and not behind the pots and pa--wait a minute, the hissing was definitely louder even though the cabinet appeared to be bone dry.  

The mice had been working on an entry hole from the downstairs wall to the upstairs kitchen pot and pan cabinet and nicked the (not currently in operation, see refrigerator woes)(note the additional humor in the fact that the tv stopped working since that post and we now have a new tv) water line for the ice cube maker.  After some wrestling and cursing and barking of orders and an emergency caving expedition where the humans sent the young girl human into the back corner of the cabinet to extricate some needed slack from behind a retaining nail, the adult human female was able to (finally!) pinch off the hose and duct tape (yay duct tape!) it that way in two places.  A towel was applied, but proved to be useless--the fine spray had dripped between the walls and (happily) ran a bit sideways into the human boy's room, which caused the alert.  If it had remained between the walls or in the cabinet, it would have been some time before the problem was discovered.

The mice sighed.  "What'll we do now, Brain?"  (reference, Pinky and the Brain)

Luckily we didn't have to call a plumber for an emergency call.  He can come out whenever, and not charge us after hours rates.  I don't think there's any serious damage to the floor (from underneath seepage) or wall, but only time will tell.

Ugh ugh ugh ...

3 comments:

C. Jane Reid said...

Wow. Those mice are a major nuisance. You should think about getting some cats. ;-)

David D. Levine said...

So it really is true that the best-laid plans of mice oft gang a-gley.

The Moody Minstrel said...

NARF!!!!!!!

(Someone needs to design a sensor that detects and locks onto a mouse saying, "Y-y-y-y-Y-Y-ES!!!"