My kid has Rob & Big beat

I normally don’t like shows on MTV unless they have the word Giant in the title, or something closely related. So in keeping with that theme (or sickness, whatever you want to call it) I watched Rob & Big for the first time this week. I was amused. They had a rat problem in a very new-looking (probably million dollar) home. How does that happen? Anyway, the very last person they called was the guy they should’ve called first - the exterminator. But they aren’t really that stupid, are they? I wouldn’t be surprised if they only called in the psychic and the guy from the hippy commune who had a little too much LSD in his day for the comedic value. It was pretty funny watching and listening to those “experts” as they worked really hard to earn that cash, er, find and chase out evil spirits. At least I thought so. I’m sorry if you haven’t seen it but I’m not going to get into all of that because…

The episode of Rob & Big reminded me of the time we had a mouse problem that went on for a few years. Our house is 100 yrs old, and is in dire need of some remodeling so it’s not that surprising we had mice finding their way in. We would catch them in traps using peanut butter (the same thing the exterminator on the show did) but whenever we killed one, another would soon replace it. That was before we got our dog. She is a great dog. When we got her in 2006 the mice stopped coming in. We’re rodent-free now and it’s a wonderful feeling.

Anyhow, flashing back to when we had the mouse problem, one weekend night my sons were up really late and I had already zonked out. I was sleeping peacefully when suddenly my light turned on in the wee hours and I awoke to Cody telling me he caught a mouse. I couldn’t talk because I didn’t really want to wake up so I was thinking, That’s great, but can I go back to sleep now?

Then he stuck a seemingly empty 1-liter pop bottle in my face and told me to look.

OMG! There was a mouse inside the pop bottle, looking very dead.

I jolted up and said, “Oh my god! It’s a mouse! How did you get it in there? And how did it die?”

Cody said he caught it in his room. That was a first. Before then the little bastards hadn’t been that bold - just wandering into a bedroom like that. He said he had been trying anything he could think of to scare it away. He whipped the bottle under the bed into the direction of the noises. After a few minutes of stomping his feet, he had a look and saw that the little monster had freaked out and took cover inside the pop bottle. Another first. Cody’s gut reaction was to grab the plastic soda bottle. He took the term ‘exterminator’ to a whole new level, whipping the bottle up and down like mad while beating it against the floor. Meanwhile, the mouse was getting his brains all scrambled together so it turned out to be a fool-proof plan. It wasn’t long before it gave up on life.

Now Cody is not a violent child, in fact, none of my kids are. But it’s good to know that when it really matters, at least one of my children is able to go ballistic on a member of the animal kingdom. What’s next for Cody? I see a snake and a shovel in his future. Or maybe a dead goldfish and a toothpick.