Mouse in Wall

You know you have a mouse in the wall or something else running around inside your home when your dog spends the entire day staring at your wall and sniffing at the baseboards.  Either that, or your dog is just crazy.  But, I have a great dog, and I trust her.

At first, I didn’t notice anything odd.  Life is busy around here.  With three kids, a husband who works over 60 hours a week, and a part-time job, I have to admit I don’t take a lot of time paying attention to how my dog spends her days.  I was hurrying to get breakfast ready the other morning when my youngest said, “Mom, Daisy’s staring at the wall again.”

I was in such a hurry, and there were so many other things going on at the time that I just responded, “Hmmm, mmmm” as I rushed over to the stove to flip the frying eggs.  Unfortunately, I accidentally tipped over the juice container just then, too.  So, it wasn’t until after the eggs were on plates in front of everyone and the juice was cleaned up that my youngest piped up again.

“See, Mom?  Why is Daisy staring at the wall?”

I had no idea what she was talking about and turned to see what my German shepherd was doing.  True enough, she was pacing in front of the wall that separates the kitchen and living room, sniffing at the baseboards and whining every now and then.  Everyone stopped eating breakfast and chatting just to watch this strange behavior.  That’s right when my husband came down the stairs.  We must have been a sight.  His entire family was sitting silently, staring at the dog, who was in turn staring at the wall.  He stood there on the steps before bursting out laughing.

“What’s going on around here?” he laughed.  “We have a ghost or something?”

We all snapped out of it and breakfast resumed, although the talk was about what could possibly cause Daisy to act that way.  My children each told me they had seen Daisy doing this every now and then over the last few days, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it until someone actually said something to me.

Finally, we all agreed we must have a mouse in the wall.  But, the morning was ticking on and everyone needed to get to school or work, so we finished up and I sent everyone out the door.  I turned to look at Daisy in my kitchen and sighed.  I had about an hour before I needed to be at work, and I knew I had to spend that time making sure we didn’t have a mouse infestation and doing something about the mouse in the wall.

Reluctantly, I opened up the pantry, and started pulling everything out, inspecting it as I did so.  I spotted a couple of tiny mouse droppings, that looked a little bit like grains of dark rice, on the floor, but our food seemed fine.  I mostly keep everything in jars, cans and plastic containers, so there wasn’t much that a mouse could get into.  One cereal box had a small hole chewed in the bottom and I tossed it, thankful that we’d been eating eggs for breakfast this week instead of cereal.  Fortunately, no mouse jumped out at me while I worked.

That job done, I called a rodent removal service to come out and inspect our property and get rid of the mouse in our wall.  I thought having a dog would protect my family from intruders, but apparently my Daisy protects us from mice, as well.  Good dog!

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