Tuesday, February 13, 2007

A game of cat and mouse

When the cat is away the mice will play… paintball?

When Ferris was a young teen he and his buddies played paintball. He had a couple guns, one of those cool facemasks, and other various accoutrement. There were also some leftover paintballs.
Since he has grown into a strapping young man – these items have been relegated to a box in the basement.

A couple of weeks ago – my organized wife and I were tidying up the basement when we noticed little pink blobs and slimy streaks on the basement floor.
We, relatively quickly for two old ladies, realized these were expoloded paintballs.
We wondered if perhaps Ferris had decided this may be a fun new dorm toy, so I checked for his paintball box and it was still there... and seemingly intact.

We dismissed it as an isolated incident.

Well,over the last couple of days I think I have been smelling the tell tale aroma of a mouse making his final ascent. Last night I decided to rip apart the basement to try and find the little guy - to of course be sure he was laid to rest properly... in the pet cemetary we call our back yard.

In my quest for the little rodent, I came upon this -

These are paintballs. These paintballs have been placed under the furnace.

The paintballs came from this box:


See the paintballs laying on the top - these had been in sealed bags tucked under the gun, mask and tanks. Not only that, but this box is in a separate room no where near the furnace. The agile little critters opened the bags, took the paintballs up and out of the box, carried them out of the room and clear across the baesment to place them gently under the furnace. And other than those few little blobs of paint two weeks ago - we never saw a paintball.

Ok, so I can accept the fact that since the cat died we clearly have multiple rodent issues. But what's going on with the paintballs? Is it some wacky late night rodent football. Is under the furnace a goal?

Time to pull out the ole RTD.

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