Me: Hi Aunt Carolanne.
AC: JoanneMarie, I'm glad I reached you. What's new over there? Is it just you and Mickey?
Me: Yeah, what's up?
AC: I'm going over Louise's because I have no where to sleep tonight and I just thought that you might want me to come stay over at your house.
Me: Of course you can sleep here, you are always welcome here. Wait! Why don't you have anywhere to sleep tonight?
AC: Something ate all of my jellybeans last night.
Me: Okaaaaay. Wait. What?!!?
AC: Last night I poured a bowl full of jellybeans and put it on the counter and went to bed and when I woke up they were all gone. Now my house if full of poison and mousetraps.
So, I assured her that our guest room was available to her and that she could come any time. But, she was worried that cousin Louise would be disappointed if she didn't stay over there. She was going to figure out what she wanted to do and she'd call back and let me know.
While waiting to find out what she decided to do, I filled Mickey in on the situation. He figured that she couldn't have possibly filled a bowl with jellybeans and they just disappeared. She must have forgotten to do it, but forgot and then thought she had done it. I told him that as far as I could figure, you'd need a little fire line of mice passing the beans one at a time to each other down the line and off to wherever they came from. Mickey wondered if maybe Aunt Carolanne sleep walked, or if Uncle Camillo had eaten them. But, she only said that she had no where to sleep, which meant that he had to be away on business.
When Aunt Carolanne called back, I got to try our new line of questioning.
Me: Are you sure you put the jelly beans in the bowl?
AC: Yes. Since Cam is away, Louise was going to come over tonight and she always has a bowl of candy at her house. I had off from work yesterday and I went to the store and picked up some stuff and cleaned the house. Last night I put the few bananas I bought on the counter in the kitchen, near the double doors to the deck. There's also a candle there. I took out a bowl and poured the whole bag of jellybeans into the bowl. It was really full and I did eat a few of them, but the bowl was stilled all the way filled, just not spilling over. I shifted the bowl and the candle on the counter a few times. I went to bed after 11 o'clock and that bowl was completely filled with candy. This morning when I went downstairs the bowl was completely empty. Not one single jellybean in it.
Me: Are you taking Ambien or anything like that?
AC: You are the third person to ask me that today!
Me: Well, they say people who take that sleep- eat and sleep- drive. Is it possible you went downstairs at night to eat them?
AC: I asked myself that , but I've never done it before. I have to keep explaining it to everyone so they know I'm not just crazy. the bowl was filled last night and was completely empty this morning. I thought someone came in the house while I was asleep and ate all the jellybeans, but that doesn't make sense. Now, I'm not sure which is more disturbing, that someone came in or something.
Me: It just seems crazy that a tiny little mouse managed to take every bean out of the bowl and leave no trace. Was the bowl disturbed? Not a single piece of candy on the floor? Nothing?
AC: No, the bowl was exactly where it was. The bananas weren't touched. Every single jelly bean was gone. That's 175 jellybeans, because I bought another bag today and that's how many are in it. This morning, I saw it, gasped and then I got ready so fast, grabbed my stuff and got out of here. All I could think was that the mouse should have gone to sleep in his nest after he spent the whole night running back and forth hiding those jellybeans, but instead, he's all hopped up on the sugar and going nuts. I couldn't stay in the house.
It turns out that she called a handyman from the driveway, after she evacuated the house as quickly as she could. He couldn't make it there until tomorrow. So, she called an exterminator and he went this afternoon. At first he said he couldn't imagine a mouse doing all of that. Later he said he saw a video of a mouse that systematically emptied a bowl/plate/dish of something, one piece at a time, over the course of a night. He filled every nook and cranny in the house (after my aunt has spent the last 25 plus years filling every tiny crack she's ever seen with steel wool and some kind of mouse preventive powder before she caulked them closed) with peanut butter flavored poison cubes. Now, she's afraid it will just attract more mice.
I'm afraid of what this mouse will look like. I'm picturing human looking hands and, well, now he's got to be morbidly obese. He ate three/four times his weight in jellybeans last night.
Yikes! Just yikes!
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