"I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground!"
--Robert DeNiro, The Untouchables
Oh wait... I already did that last part twice now. And, as of this morning, I've played "fire department" three times as well.
Yes, I discovered that my arch nemesis has rebuilt his home in my grill. Katie and I were trying to grill some goods for lunch yesterday and, inside the grill, was another mouse condo. Unfortunately, "Sylvie" -- as I've taken to calling the little bastard as it's an abbreviated version of his scientific name Apodemus sylvaticus -- was not home. But, I soaked his home, removed it, and torched the remnants anyway.
I'm assuming that, like some young children, if the mouse didn't see it happen, it never did in his mind, and he won't learn from the experience. This morning, for kicks, I opened the lid of the grill and there was his cute, little, disease-harboring self staring right back up at me. I swear he was mocking me. So, I flooded him. And then I continued to hose him as he raced across our backyard.
The first time we came across Sylvie, it had been a month since we'd used our grill. We believed our grilling inactivity had contributed in some way to his mousey construction plans. Guess we were wrong. We used the grill only this past weekend and here he was all moved in again. And he was back there a third time less than 16 hours later.
Now we need to figure out how he's getting up there. We were storing our deck chairs under the grill cover as protection from the elements the first time. They fold up and fit perfectly under the cooling racks on either side of the grill. When we found little torn spots on the canvas of the chair, we figured he climbed his way up and over on the chairs themselves. Sort of a makeshift ladder.
The second time, however, the chairs weren't under the cover. So we concluded that he was using his little claws to climb the inside of our canvas grill cover.
But, now I'm at a complete loss. I didn't have the cover on it overnight at all. I just forgot to put it back on. Obviously, this fuzzy little shit has some mad climbing skills because he would have had to scale sheet metal or our propane tank straight up to get in there. Unless he's got wings, I see no other way.
Sylvie, I tried to be nice. I had hoped you would have learned your less from merely being soaked and having your house torched. This has proven to be enough convincing in urban riots and instances of third-world genocide. I really didn't want to have to hurt you permanently. Now, you've overstepped your bounds and overstayed your welcome.
ASPCA be damned... you will pay.
I think I'm starting to get a taste for how Ahab felt. I have my white whale.
