The Window Well Trap

I have had two visitors in my window well recently. Both times I was alerted to the visitor by my cats suddenly running to that window. The first time it was a baby robin who had fallen in and couldn't fly out again. My dad came and was trying to catch it, but he was hampered by the parents dive bombing his head. He kept throwing the robin up and it would land on the edge of the window well and then fall in again. I finally asked my dad to move and caught it. Holding it very carefully I went down the hall, up the stairs, and released it on the front porch. It flew across the road and landed in the grass. The parents of course were still going crazy, thinking it was in the window well. It just sat there for the longest time. I walked across the road and got about a foot away from it. It hopped through the fence, onto the golf course and then hopped along the fence until it's mom came and then they flew off into the trees.

I always look at the robins around here looking to see if it's "our" robin and hoping it survived.

The second one was really early in the morning, probably 3 or 4 am. I heard this rustling and my cats were at the window immediately. I pulled out the screen, (in the process it broke because it was wedged in there so tight I had to yank on it). Shining a flashlight out, the cats and I discovered what looked like a mouse. Well there was no way I wanted a mouse living in my window well and so I let the cats out. They both smelled it, looked at it, Myste lifted a paw and touched it. It gave this high pitched squeak and both my cats freaked out. The cats were afraid of this thing.

Then Myste decided it was more fun to jump out of the window well and go exploring. So I replaced the screen as best I could, it wouldn't stay, so I closed the window. I quickly ran upstairs and out the front door. Myste was prowling through the bushes and was very unhappy when I caught her and brought her back in. Since she has no claws and I am seriously paranoid about her getting run over I could not allow her to stay outside.

What to do about that mouse? We have a humane mouse trap in the garage so after some searching and moving heavy objects I found it. I brought it down and put it in the window well and then played AOE3 for a while. I then went and checked and there it was, in the trap. But there was something else in the trap too...

A dead mouse's snout was caught in the back of the mechanism, and I don't know how long it had been there. Oh ICK!

So I carefully took the trap out to the back porch and my nephew Tayler carried it across the road and released the live one, then brought the trap back. We left it on the patio for my dad to deal with. Ugh.

Turns out the mouse was actually a Vole. My dad says the short tail is the indicator for that.

GROSS!

So I was making some dinner and thought scrambled eggs sounded good. I got out the eggs, washed them, got the pan hot, and cracked the first egg. It had a thick membrane inside and so I had to kind of break that too. Out fell some egg yolk and a little white and a big, bloody, gross blob. I just about threw up right there. I hollered for my dad to come save me and ran out of the kitchen. I don't think I will choose to eat eggs for a LONG time.