If only the mice were this dumb...

I moved into a new house with the lovely Tina a couple of weeks ago, and much to our dismay, we discovered we have a mouse, or mice. I've seen one of the little devils twice. Per Tina's sweetness, we opted to go with the "friendly" traps, or as I like to call them "traps that don't work".

One mouse figured out it was safer to actually chew through the side of the trap to get at the peanut butter than it was to enter the traditional way. I was irritated, but duly impressed- "these little pains-in-the-ass are pretty smart," I thought out loud.

After two weeks of finding little mouse surprises, Tina has been converted from "let's catch them and set them free somewhere" to "we've got to get rid of these bastards".

I foolishly thought that the 80 pound bull dog sleeping in the kitchen would be at least a minor deterrent, but this dog sleeps like Rip Van Winkle. You literally open the front door and walk by him without waking him up. I often have to shake him awake for his end of the night bathroom run, so I guess it is delusional to expect that he is going to hear mice and scare them off.

I went to a movie today with my dad. When we leave the house, we leave Manny (the aforementioned bull dog) in the kitchen, which is a pretty good size). The house is a bit old, so you have to make sure you pull the doors tight until you hear a "click", telling you that the door is, in fact, shut tight.

I learned by not doing this that Manny likes to nose the door open and sit on the couch or my chair. He also likes to break into the bedroom and toss a certain bag of toiletries around, decorating the room with toilet paper like a jr high kid out on the town Halloween night.

Arriving home after the movie, I immediately noticed there was no manny in the kitchen...not in his bed, not anywhere. The second thing I noticed was the bedroom door slightly ajar. I walked in, already irritated at myself for not being more careful and making sure the door was shut tight. I walked in expecting to find him on the bed, and ready to give him a good stink eye and grimace along with a stern word (not that I recommend abusing animals, but you seriously hit this oaf with a frying pan and he wouldn't notice.) I asure you, the stink-eye inflicts mroe punishment than anything corporal.

But where is he? He isn't on the bed... the other door, leading around to the living room is still closed, and no Manny. I sat on the bed, confused for a moment before I heard a low growl. Not an angry growl, but one of frustration... the kind of growl I often emit when I find Manny on the couch after several hundred episodes of pulling him off the couch and banishing him to the kitchen.

The sound was coming from the closet.

I opened the closet to find Manny amid his favorite bag of toiletries, with several pairs of my pants on the floor, providing a make-shift bed. The poor little pooch, no bed in the closet? If he had guessed it would have been so inhospitable, he probably would'ne have broken in in the first place, the humanity!

Manny usually sports a very guilty look and puts his head as close to the ground as possible, sheepishly asking for leniency when caught in the act. Since I had been gone for 2 1/2 hours, he must've figured being locked in a closet all that time should work as "time served", and he simply paraded out of the closet and strolled directly to his bed as if to say, "it's about time you got home, jackass... do you know how long I've been in there?"

He hadn't counted on not being able to nose the door back open after he closed it by resting his giant butt against it.

The thing with this mutt is, he has such personality and such a lump, that you can't possibly stay made at him for longer than two minutes. It took him all of five minutes to pass out after he got so tired, resting in the closet on my bed of pants.

I amnot sure if we need a smarter dog, or dumber mice.