The Mouse Story

After a long day at work, I headed for some meetings at church which was not unusual during this particular period of our life. My wife was quite used to "manning" the house by herself on a regular basis. On this particular night, there were about 15 people, and I was in charge of this particular meeting. I believe we had been going about 20 minutes when my cell phone began to ring. At first I ignored it, but it continued to ring(vibrate) and so I finally decided I had better check and see who it was. I looked and saw that it was my wife. Fearing that something had happened to one of my children, I asked to be excused and stepped out into the hallway and called home. My son Derek answered the phone and all I could hear was screaming. High-pitched screams. Immediately I thought the worst, someone had broken into the house and was killing my family. I finally got Derek to put his mother on the phone.
"Jan, what is going on? Is everyone Okay?"
"No! Everything is not okay!" (Sobs)
"Honey what is wrong?" (more sobs, screaming in the background followed by a loud thump and then more screaming)
"Dave you need to come home right now!"
I quickly hung up the phone, stepped back into the room and let everyone know I would return and asked my friend Steve Daily to continue the meeting.
I drove home, about a 5 minute drive with all sorts of thoughts going through my head. I ran into the house and my daughter Jaimie was sitting on the table with Derek and Dallin, as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, there was my sweet wife holding a large plastic cup and screaming to the top of her lungs as a mouse jumped from the counter into the sink of dirty dishes.
When my wife saw me, she dropped the cup and buried her face into my shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
"No I am not okay, I was doing dishes when a mouse jumped onto the counter and I grabbed a cup and smashed the mouse, I screamed to the top of my lungs and threw the cup because it made the most horrific sound, that caused the kids to start to yell and scream. Then another mouse jumped onto the counter in the exact same place, and it is in the sink!"
I took the plastic cup and began searching calmly through the sink and soon found the tiny mouse and lightly smashed it and picked it up by the tail and took both dead mice out to the garage and deposited them into the garbage can. Gave my wife and kids a hug, and laughed all the way back to church. The entire group lost it when I told them why I had to go home. My wife was not happy with me to find out that I had told the entire leadership of our church what a terrible housekeeper she was and that come Sunday, the entire church was going to know that we had mice! By the way, for those who haven't been to my house, Jan likes it clean. she was mortified.
Needless to say, I found the hole where the mice were accessing the kitchen from the crawlspace and put foam with cayenne pepper to keep them out.
The moral of the story is not to ignore your sweetheart when the phone rings, she and the children could quite possibly be traumatized for life!