Pay Back

Well well well….it seems that karma is indeed a bitch.

Anyone who knows me knows how I love the gay high holiday of Halloween. It takes a good deal of restraint on my part to wait for Thanksgiving to be over before I start making it look like Halloween threw-up in my house.

In more recent years, I have limited myself to ONE new Halloween decoration per year AND it has to be homemade. More often then not, Martha Steward inspired. You can read all about last year’s mummy if you dig back a few posts. I will post shortly about my bird themed creation this year and might bend my ‘one only’ rule slightly after making a ghastly discovery.

Last year, shortly after having had tucked into turkey, gravy and cranberry sauce, I was packing away my autumnal decorations. The crown jewel of my collection is a wheat sheaf. Scratch that, the PERFECT wheat sheaf. I put it in the garage while I gathered a few other odds and sods and no joke, less than 10 minutes later went back to put it in its assigned Rubbermaid bin when two mice jump out and ran away.

Nasty little critters! Thankfully minimal damage was inflicted and I got a good story out it. Still payback was in order. Traps and poison were the order of the day. Less than a table spoon of peanut butter and two “thwacks” later, my two for a dollar traps finished off a couple. I like to think they were the gang leaders.

The Jim Jones canary seed took care of the rest….or so I thought. This year, as I opened one of my bins, puffs of tiny little Styrofoam balls filled my garage. My headwaiter had all his mummy wrappings torn away and good chunks of his head and cheeks were missing! I guess in addition to being good for a scream, he is also good for making a nest.

There were also mucho droppings in the bin and one of my screaming skeletons was covered in what I can only guess is mice urine. How rude. Latex gloves, borax and a sponge cleaned that up.
New bins with no holes for handles are now in place and I can only hope it was same little buggers that inflicted the damage. If not, it means I have new house guests and it is game on once again….