a mouse in the house

I get home yesterday and pull the car into the garage and the door from the laundry room comes flying open and there is Jusitn... "there's a mouse in the house!"  Huh?  He never greats me with this much enthusiasm, but he comes to the car door with big excited eyes and tells me "a baby mouse, in the house, it is so cute?"  I walk inside and find Teal {his sitter} standing in the dining room with the kitchen colander in hand pointing to the fireplace.  She said it was injured and they had been trying for the past 2 hours to get it out.  The front door was wide open.  I cracked up!  Then I went and dropped the bottom panel of the fireplace down and found this little gray critter shivering and licking his injured front leg.  Clearly one of the cats had drug in the mouse.  Justin was in love "ohhhh, he is so cute, hi, hi mouse, oh, it is a baby mouse, ohhh, he is soooo cute!"

Looks like I have a lot of dust bunnies under the fireplace to deal with.  Gross!

With the fireplace opened up we placed a book down and I instructed Justin to plop the colander down when the mouse got on the book.  It didn't take long - I think the mouse wanted out just as bad as we wanted him out.  I think Justin would have loved to keep the mouse, but I hate rodents and that just isn't an option.  With the mouse under the colander I scooped it up and we went outside to set it free.  Phillip from next door was outside spreading bark dust and thought I was nuts - he offered up a plastic bag so that I could dispose of the mouse in the trash.  I couldn't do it - so Justin and I set off to the drainage area at the end of the street and sent the little guy on his way.  He will be easy pickin's for the cats that roam that area of the street, but at least we did what we could and Justin was pleased with the outcome.