AtoZ Yuck, Dead Mouse Disposal or Yma Sumac

Can you believe we're down to the final two posts in this year's epic 2014 AtoZ Challenge? I've met so many awesome people along the way. I'm so glad I joined, even though I'm freaking out with how crazy busy I am at the moment. I want to thank the hosts and all the cool Ninja Minions, especially Susan Gourley, who talked me into doing the challenge this year. She's awesome!!

So today's reruns are of two kinds. The first is for the uninitiated. Those of you who haven't yet seen the crazy goings on at my blog. I give you a gentle one to ease you in. For those who are now hardened readers, the second one is for you, and I will beg you later to get the professional help you need for being hard-core followers. (Even though I appreciate you soooooo much that I want to make you pie. And I don't even bake.) So without further ado I give you two Y posts for the price of one.

Now For Something Completely Different

NPR created a program celebrating 50 Great Voices this year, and I was inspired to make a pick of my own for inclusion in the NPR celebration.

I've been kicking around doing a post on this amazing singer for a while, and this was an easy opportunity to do so. Yma Sumac was born in Peru and is said to be the only known person to have a voice with a five octave range. It is also believed that she had no formal musical training and couldn't read music.

Here is some rare footage of Yma accompanied by my favorite song of hers - Gopher Mambo.



Just for the record, I also think Freddie Mercury, Bing Crosby  and Roger Daltrey should be included on the list. Because, really, how can you pick just one?

So how about you? Who do you think should be included in 50 Greatest Voices?

**Gentle, sweet, uninitiated readers, time to skip to the comments section! The rest of you, hold on for the ride!**

The Dead Mouse Disposal Saga of a Reformed Horror Flick Junkie

Ok, so it's 5:25 in the morning, and I get out of bed because I hear the ominous clicking of toenails on tile of my incontinent dog. (Yes, I even have a post to explain that statement.) I'm in no mood for a forced game of dog crap hide and seek, so I get up and take her out. As I'm waiting for her to come back in, I check, with much inward trepidation, the four mouse traps on our counter.

Sidebar. I have to. I live in a house that was built in 1826. There were mouse runs in it before I was even born. I'm not a slovenly housekeeper. They've been getting into the house for almost 200 years. Not a whole lot I can do about it besides always putting boxed food in plastic containers and the like to discourage them.

Anywho - The Man had called for an all out war on this particular intrepid rodent. And I was behind him all the way. It was trying to make a nest in the bottom drawer of my oven. I'm out for some serious blood.

So I force myself to peek at the first two traps. They're your standard snap trap with peanut butter on them. Like the previous two days, the peanut butter is gone, the trap is still intact, and there's a mouse turd next to it.

With many a colorful explicative turn of phrase involving this mouse and all it's ancestors back to the beginning of time itself, I check the next trap in line. It's a plastic circular trap that lures the mouse in and closes when it does.

I'm a little leery of this one ever since a former uber-mouse, which must have been a direct relative of this one, chewed its way out of one of these traps after it was in the outside trash can and then began chewing through two layers of said trash can to free itself. I still have the chew holes to prove it. The Man heard the noise, opened the trash can, and out sprang this seriously hopped-up mouse. Suffice it to say, he was lucky to get away with his life.

I check the dubious circle trap. It's still set. So I turn my wary gaze over to the new trap.

Now, we knew we weren't dealing with your everyday run of the mill vermin. I was at my wits end and starting to look a little like Bill Murray in Caddy Shack during his quest for the gopher.




I found myself dreaming of plastic explosives in the shapes of mice and rabbits just to destroy this thing. In that vein of thinking, The Man and I went in search of a better mouse trap. And found one. It's a little plastic cave like thing with a deadly trap inside.

This trap, The Man set up on that little space of counter top behind the sink fixtures where it's extremely difficult to retrieve. And then promptly left for the weekend to go to the American Lemanz race in Connecticut with his brothers.

So here I am in a summer pajama top and undies, no corrective lenses in place, squinting at a long straight tail and fat hindquarters splayed out from the opening of the cave trap.

My first reaction is the freaky ick jump-back combined with the gross-out circular dance. Which--admittedly--ended in a small victory dance. But then my sleepy brain realizes, I'm the only adult in the house until Sunday; where I then turn my powers of colorful invectives on The Man since clearly the disposal of all formerly living things falls squarely into man-land territory.

Now, I've seen Re-Animator and Pet Sematary.




Back in the day I was a full on horror-flick-watching-Stephen-King-reading junkie. The macabre was my drug of choice. Now? Not so much. But because of my former horror addiction, I have an extensive mental file of every way in which I can be gruesomely killed by another. Including death by deranged animals -okay, cats- coming back to life to terrorize you.

If cats, then why not mice?

I look again at the long stringy tail and start making some noise just to check if it's still alive. Nothing. No twitching, no busting out of the cave like the Hulk. I make some more noise, just to triple check-I am dealing with the spawn of uber-mouse, here. Nothing. So I search the immediate vicinity and begin gathering my implements of destruction.

Picture if you will a grown woman in a pajama top and underwear, her husband's flip-flops, gigantic leather gloves and iron tongs from the wood stove, and a flimsy plastic grocery bag. Still without glasses on. (If I could have scrounged up a welder's mask I would have.)

I stand poised, holding the heavy tongs in my gloved hands. The gloves are ten sizes too big and unwieldy as all get out. The tongs are clearly not the right disposal tool, but there's no way in hell I'm getting close to this thing. After several botched attempts consisting of a lot of grossed out squealing and tiptoe icky-dancing, I finally maneuver the trap and dead mouse into the bag.

Quickly tying the top, and trying hard not to think about how flimsy it is, I run out to the trash can, open it up, drop the bag-o-possibly-mostly-dead-uber-mouse in and slam it shut. Where I realize that THERE IS STILL AN ESCAPE ROUTE HOLE CHEWED IN THE LID!!!. *shudder*

So now I have until trash night on Thursday to wonder if it's going to come back to life, re-infiltrate the house and murder me in my bed.

It's going to be a long friggin' week.