Number of days in Amsterdam – 130
Number of days without a bike theft – 127
Days since it last rained – 2
So, at around 4AM I was jolted awake by a scream.
I immediately sat upright and I am pretty sure I was running before I hit floor and halfway down the stairs before I was fully awake.
You see, when your wife is nine months pregnant, the 4AM scream only means one thing.
Labor has started.
Or she saw a mouse.
Remember a while back, when I’d said there was either a mouse or a gnome in the house? It’s definitely a mouse. We have visual conformation.
We had moved all the food off the counter to the cupboards, and while we never caught a mouse in the trap, we never saw signs of it again. I’m assuming that once the food was gone, it moved to another apartment.
They must have caught on and moved their food, because he came back.
So I checked the traps and rearranged, and we went back to bed.
A few hours later, another scream.
Nicole saw him again.
Pregnant women get up in the middle of the night a lot.
This is also when mice go looking for stuff.
Occasionally their paths cross.
But twice in one night?
Nicole is certain that he’s terrorizing her or trying to make her go into labor and that, the second time, he actually rushed at her.
My interpretation was that he saw her the second time that night, remembered he wanted to tell her something, and ran over. She screamed, and he forgot what he wanted to tell her.
Now we may never know.
But the traps are rebaited with fresh peanut butter.
Do Dutch mice like peanut butter?
What this city really needs (along with the small and short clothing stores) is a rent-a-cat service for expats. I can’t adopt one, because I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but I wouldn’t mind having one for a few days to help with some cleaning.
The Cheesiest.
I do need to give a special shout out to a friend from the states who was passing through today to pick up his fiance and daughter to take back home because visas had finally gone through. He brought us a few American flavors.
I have to say, I didn’t realize I was missing Mac and Cheese until I had it for lunch today.
I wonder if Dutch mice are too unfamiliar with peanut butter to consider it the staple American mice do. Maybe a bit of stroopwafel would be more to their liking? OR … maybe Dutch mice are carnivorous monsters who seek a delicious meal of herring?
The mice in the small town of Deer Lodge, Montana like crystal meth. Their cousins at nearby luxury golf/fly fishing resorts prefer strawberries.
Traverse City mice like whatever the teenagers have left under the couch cushions, including but by no means limited to Taco Bell, microwave popcorn, and petrified Kraft Mac & Cheese.
Maybe re-bait the trap line with a variety of items that Dutch teens consider to be staple foods? Or maybe a pinch of something special from a nearby coffee shop?