Bernice...aka Stew

Seize the opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
- a Bulgarian Proverb

Sunday afternoon, the Wiegand girls and I were getting restless at church waiting for nursing home singing. I decided I would take them to Orange Julius to pass the time. Unfortunately, I did not have my wallet, so upon arrival we had a choice to make. Go back to church or head to the nursing home. In fact, we did neither. Instead, we decided to go to the boys' house and consume some of their pop and maybe some snacks if there were some to be found. Upon arrival, I recalled a certain instance where the entire store of toilet paper from our house was walked off with by the occupants of said household. Duly noted was Brae and I's conquest to "run off" with Stew, their beloved mascot.

Bernice with her captors!

Upon arrival:
"I think it looks like a french fry...no I mean a chicken nugget." - Kate

Upon execution:
"Yuck! I touched one of it's things!" - Gabri

Upon recognition:
"Kidnapper!" - Jake
"He means an 'it'-napper!" - Gabri

"You must have offered him Twizzlers, it's his favorite candy. But I know he will come back because he loves me more." - Jake
"Who...Jared?" - Bub

Upon a story retold:
"He was so heavy Tifani couldn't even pick him up!" - Kate

So, what is Bernice up to these days you may ask? Monday, she decided that my bed looked kinda comfy and made her way in to hang out under the covers.

Tuesday, she thought a change of style was due. She was a bit self conscious after hearing me groan when picking her up, and decided to take up swimming to rid herself of some of her rolls. Her she was patiently waiting for Tara to get home so she could ask thoughts on this new look.

All in all, I would say she is adapting well to her new environment. You can find her most of the time chilling in the living room singing along to her favorite Musicals. You never know where she is going to end up though, she definitely has a mind of her own.

: )

Seven!

Seven would be the number of mice we have killed in my house/garage in a three day span! Yuck! Then again...I shouldn't say we...I should say me. My roommates have not been involved. It all goes back to blame on Chelsie, who chased a mouse up my dryer shoot. Yes Chelsie, I blame you. The mice were living in our air ducts all last summer and in to the fall. Brae discovered their poop and heard them skampering around. When we turned on the air this winter, they moved in to our cupboards and such. Brae's mom sent back some of that poison that is supposed to kill them but not make them smell, I think it worked. But then I had our ducts cleaned and I think they vaccumed it up! A couple weeks back we were having World Relief at our house where we found all our dish talls covered in poop. The guys' brought us over a mousetrap that we set under there. And the next morning....OH! The mouse must have been sniffing his way in to the cupboard because the trap was right down on his brain. YUCK! It gives me the begeebies just typing that. It made a blood mess. So this recent madness started up with me washing more of our H2B guys' work shirts. I had a box of them in the garage. When I opened the box, a little mouse ran out and along the wall. I tried to grab a BOOT and kill it, but it was too quick for me. I went back to my work and another one hopped out. This one I was able to smash...with no blood : ) After that, I kept setting the same trap in the same spot, shown below.

Then, to release the dead ones, I would dump them over my neighbors fence. Shhhhh! Don't tell.

The burial ground.

I haven't caught anymore since Sunday afternoon. The one in the picture above with the blood was the last one and bigger than the others by quite a bit. I'm HOPING, that all the little mice are gone. They are just disgusting rodents to me.

On another note, my volleyball team has won one game. Out of maybe 8 games. ouch. Tuesday night we played a team that has some reallly reallly really good spikers. The below is my hand two days after playing. One of the spikes was so hard that it jammed my thumb. Actually I felt kinda bad because after the play a girl from their team was trying to make me feel better by saying, "The last time he hit it, it knocked a guy over." I was being sarcastic and said, "so...you're saying I'm manlier than a man?" She got this really taken aback look on her face and her team mate said, "No, she's not condescending like that." OOOPs! I apologized and felt bad for being dumb! Not the right time apparently!

Update: Two more mice were caught yesterday. One's head was mutilated!! In fact, he pretty much had a non-existent head.