Were You Brought Up In A Barn?

This is a question I used to ask my children regularly, especially after finding old ice cream dishes under the bed, wet towels on the floor, smelly socks tucked down under the furniture cushions. And that was just the boys. We won't even discuss Amy's room. If they had just hung around home a few more years, they might have answered "yes," because now we actually do live in a barn (not the one in the photo though). From the information I received from the former owners, our barn was built around 1797 and converted to a residence in 1965. We have the original pegged beams with roman numerals, a hayloft and, if you look closely up in the attic, the outline of an old barn door. It's all very charming and quaint. Except for one thing. Mice. There are many secret passageways traveling up and down the old beams and through the floors into the cellar that generations of mice have passed through on their way to a cozy, warm houseful of food. Usually we start seeing signs of them in the fall when the weather turns nippy. Imagine our surprise, then, when last night as we were sitting watching tv, a small furry body launched itself across the living room floor and disappeared into the baseboard heat register. My first impulse was to scream "eek" and pull my (bare) feet up off the floor. Don't get me wrong here, I am an animal lover to the core. I open doors to let flies out, I care for the critters in my yard as if they were pets, but I have to draw the line at mice. I just refuse to share my barn with mice. Although, when I really think about it, it was probably theirs before it was mine.