Mouser?

My wife called me at work to let me know that Juno, our cat, had caught her first mouse and brought it to her. This was a big deal. Juno is almost 13 years old, and, as far as we know, has never caught a mouse. 

Back in 2012 we had a mouse in our house, and it got so brazen that we all saw it out of it's hidey-hole several times, but despite owning a cat that was young and spry, we only got rid of the mouse through the use of judiciously placed traps.

So when my wife saw Juno come in the house with a mouse tail hanging out of her mouth, she was proud of Juno for her achievement. Problem was that Juno didn't bring the mouse to my wife. Juno brought the mouse inside and then ran under the couch with it.

My wife was not looking forward to disposing of its body, but she wanted to get right on that before something gross happened, like the cat spreading entrails all over her floor or something. 

Strangely, Juno came back out from under the couch, but did not have the mouse in her mouth anymore. She circled the couch, meowing constantly at it.

At last, my wife got some help from my daughter, and they lifted the couch to where they could see underneath it...and there was nothing there.

"Oh, no," my wife thought. "The mouse wasn't dead after all." Juno had brought a live mouse into her house, and now it was somewhere inside her couch.

They upended the couch, and that's when they got their first look at the mouse. It had climbed up onto the frame of the couch, but now that it was exposed, it wasn't going to wait around to be a cat treat.

It ran out of the couch, and scrambled across the room, looking for an escape route. They pursued it, and managed trap it in one corner of the room. The two tenderhearted girls couldn't bring themselves to off the mouse, so rather than smack it over the head with the broom, they grabbed the cat and threw her into the fray.

That was a pretty bad idea. Juno just isn't qualified for a job like that. Her resume would immediately be trashed if it came across the desk of someone looking for a good mouser.

Juno was willing to give it a shot though. She charged in after the mouse, which evaded her attack and ran over to the fireplace, climbed inside, up the chimney, found a crack where the top of the firebox is, and slipped back behind it.

Juno meowed and sat in front of the fireplace for the rest of the night, but there was no way to get after the mouse. It was stuck in there. It couldn't really get out, unless it wanted to die on the claws of a cat, and we couldn't get it out without a shrink ray.

Juno caught her first mouse, and was so inept that she didn't kill it. Instead she brought it alive into our house, and now it was loose in our house. Thanks so much cat. All that food we've been giving you over the years has been totally worth it.

There is a happy ending to the story though...but not for the mouse. Juno (and the rest of us) kept an eye on the fireplace over the next few days.

I even lit the fire one time, assuming that the mouse would come out rather than cook to death inside there, but either way it would work in our favor. Didn't work that way though. I think the position the mouse had found was protected from heat by the firebox, so nothing came of my attempt to flush it out of its hiding spot.

After two days hiding in there, though, the mouse finally got hungry or thirsty enough to risk making a run for it. Juno had heard it making rustling noises, and pounced on it the second it showed its whiskers.

She ran under the couch with it again, but this time, I came out and had my wife and daughter upend the couch. Juno wasn't tearing into the mouse under there. Instead it was standing on the ground in front of Juno looking like the two were having a conversation or something. When I caught sight of the mouse, however, I used a wiffle ball bat to dispatch it.

So, in a way, you could say that Juno caught her first mouse, but you could also say that she's just as worthless as ever.

An Amazing Friend

I was telling Rish how I'd love to have the new Firestar figure that they'd released this year, but I had yet to see it.

Well, he took it upon himself to make it happen. He looked my zipcode up on the Gamestop website and found a store that claimed to have the figure.

I chatted with him on the phone while I drove about a half hour away and found the figure there waiting for me. And now, it's Spider-man and His Amazing Friends!

First Of May Toys?

They put out an endcap of new arrivals at Target on the Lego aisle, and boy howdy are they timely. Check this out:

I don't know about you, but I'm always thinking about Christmas on the First of May. Oh wait, no, this is what I'm thinking about:

The toys they sell for the First of May can only be found in a different store.

Troubled Child

I got to do a voice on a story on Marshal Latham's Journey Into... podcast. I play the voice of Don on Rish Outfield's "Troubled Child" story. The story won second place in Marshal's Journey Into Journey contest (the same contest that I easily took last place in).

Give it a listen. You'll be glad you did.

Coming To Fruition

When I lived in Brazil for two years, I got to know the Brazilian tradition of hammocks. They're so ubiquitous there that people embed hooks into the walls of their porch or even the walls of their indoor rooms so that they can attach a hammock. We couldn't do that here, but we decided to make something similar, a wooden hammock stand for our backyard:

That wasn't the end of our plans however. Back at our last house, we built a pergola on our back porch.

Though we never managed to grow a plant, we had dreams of growing wisteria up into the pergola that would look like the wisteria tunnels in Japan.

Sadly, we moved away before we could even get started on such a project, but here in Houston we're trying to achieve a slightly toned down version of that same dream. We're growing wisteria on our hammock stand.

Each year since we planted it, it's been improving, and this year is the first year that it is starting to look like what we dreamed of. Here's some pictures to check out and see what you think.

Adjustable Arcee

I got the Arcee you can find in stores these days, but, while it was a great figure, I wasn't satisfied with it. I needed to make an adjustment, because this baby's got back...pack.

It doesn't have to be quite that big of a backpack. She can unload some of the junk out of her trunk, but even then the backpack is still big.

I'm just not a fan of the backpack. And truthfully, I don't care if she can transform or not. I never display my Transformers in the vehicle mode. 

But, I watched a video on YouTube that showed me how I could modify her until the backpack was off. Yes, it took breaking it a little bit, but I don't mind.

So, there you go:

Looks great, right? Surprisingly, you can even still have the car form with what was left of the backpack as well. I guess the thing just went over the top of her like a shell.

The only issue is this stuff on her back...

But of course you'll never see it when I put her on my shelf.

Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!

My son got these sticky gel letters to put on his door at Halloween. We got them from the dollar store. Let me just give you a little warning if you see them this upcoming Halloween and are considering buying them. They bleed.

I mean, yeah, they're meant to look like words scrawled in blood, but that's not what I'm talking about.

We peeled the letters off back in November, but the words remained. The color bled out of the gel and onto the wall. 

Now, here we are in April, and it's still there. We're going to have to repaint if we ever want it to come off. 

It's cool at Halloween time, but having "Get out!" scrawled in blood didn't make for a particularly good Easter decoration.