If you can't Beat 'Em....

Join 'Em! You've heard that saying before. Well, seems Annie has heard that saying before also, because this afternoon she did just that....She joined 'em!

It's obvious that we haven't solved the mouse problem in my van, and it's obvious that the mice are getting desperate. I've been diligent in keeping the van free of food that they can feast on. As a result, they are grabbing for anything else they can get their grubby paws on. Their newest favorite is Crayola crayons. It puzzles me as to where they are finding these, but none-the-less, they are finding them and chewing them to shreds on the carpet in my car. This morning they created a beautiful masterpiece with purple and white. The other day, their palette included gray and blue. If I didn't detest rodents to the nth degree, I might try to capitalize on their artistic abilities and try to sell the artwork to a local studio and make some money. There must be some animal lover out there who would find it priceless.

And if I didn't love Annie to the nth degree, I may have packed her up in a little box with those pesky rodents and set her curbside for the trash men to take, for as I said before, today she joined ranks with the rodents.

If ever I want some silence from Annie, all I need to do is give her some monotonous "picking" task. She loves to pick.

Dried glue off of fingers.

Peeling skin from a sunburned back.

Peeling skin on fingers left over from the blisters from Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease.

Dried milk on a table left-over from a meal.

You name it--She'll pick it!

Which explains why she was at a loss for words the whole ride home from Costco today. I didn't question her silence for fear that I might invite conversation from her. What I should have feared was the mess she was making all over the back seat of the car. If she wasn't holding the evidence between her scrawny little fingers, I would have surely believed that the mice were getting brave enough to work while we were out and about running errands.

In her 25 minutes of complete silence, (which is completely unheard of for my Annie), she had almost finished picking every square inch of aluminum foil backing off the wrapper of a Costco hot-dog. It wouldn't be so bad if she was ripping large pieces off, but instead, she littered the car with at least 100 tiny pieces of silver foil. And she thoroughly enjoyed every last minute of it.

Do they make traps for catching pesky little girls?