Thursday, December 04, 2008

an (too) exciting night

so i'm feeling kind of sick right now. i have whatever head cold is going around now that winter has set in. my roommate has been painting her room, so there's a mattress for her to sleep on sitting on the floor of my room upstairs. last night, as usual, we headed to bed around midnight. i quickly discovered i couldn't breathe at all, laying down, so i made my way down to the reclining couch downstairs.

about 30 minutes later, i hear thudding upstairs. and then roommie appears downstairs, and exclaims, "there's a mouse in your room." oh, dear. i quietly ask, "are you sure? like you actually saw the mouse, its eyes, it's little nose?" roommie confirms that she did actually see the mouse. so she proceeds to go to sleep in her paint-fume infested room instead.

about 30 minutes later, i decide to return to my room. i'm not getting any sleep, and just want to lay down. i'm a little freaked about the mouse, but it's not likely it will end up on my bed, so i should be ok.

so i fall asleep. i wake about 3:00 a.m., having to blow my nose, which i do, loudly. i lay my head back down on my pillow, and hear some noise. uh, oh. so i freeze, thinking that perhaps i can hear where the little mouse is hiding. all of a sudden, "twang!" i hear my guitar string move. that is not natural.

so i flip on the light, and tiptoe over to the window, where my guitar is leaning against a curtain. slowly, i pull back the guitar, looking for the mouse. nothing.

hmm. can it be? is it possible? could the mouse be IN my guitar? so i pick up the guitar & shake it a bit. sure enough, there's some thudding in the guitar that sounds like it could be a rodent.

so i quickly try to figure out what to do. clearly the mouse is contained, for the moment. so it would be good to get the awful critter out of my room. but what to do next . . . ? how do i get it to stay in there until morning? or how do i get it out in a place that's not in my house?

so i walk downstairs to roommie's room. i open the door. "ah, the mouse is in my guitar. what do i do?" awakening from a dead sleep, roommie very rationally suggests that i take it outside & dump it out. so i set down the guitar, put on my coat. at this time, dog decides that he would also like to go outside. so he jumps down from roommie's bed, and plants himself by the door.

so i'm putting on my shoes, stepping out onto a little porch, trying to open the outside door, close the inside door, let the dog out, and hold the guitar in my hand. all of a sudden "plop!"... the mouse jumps out and runs down a little hole in the porch.

i return to roommie's room and say "the mouse has taken this opportunity to jump out of the guitar." and proceed to let the dog out, where he romps in the snow.

i make it back to bed by about 3:30. the next morning, roommie asks, "was i imagining it, or did you come to my room in the middle of the night and tell me the mouse was in your guitar?"

yep. sure did.