Saw Scot last Friday and gave him a copy of Helen’s letter. I’ve completed 61 hours of community service and have 39 to go. Then he can harass me about my “not working.” Tom still thinks he won’t bring it up again. Well, if he does, he’ll quickly find that he’s wasting his time. Old fashioned or not, I’m not going to take just any job. I can’t take just any job anyway, in my case. When I find a home job, I find one. And it’s going to be because I want it and not because society or the courts said I should or had to.

Tom and I also remember things differently pertaining to that. He says Scot said he wasn’t going to worry about it, but I remember him saying we’d worry about the job after the community service is done. Well, I’m not worried about it, but he can worry about it all he wants if he’d like.

Now for the best news, non-freeloader related. We have wild mice in our vents! The bad to that is that Tom has to crawl under the house with all the snakes, scorpions and God knows what else, to find out where they’re coming in from, which will be hard. If there are any significant holes in the vent, we could lose a lot of the AC, but so far I haven’t noticed a difference in the cooling.

I heard a sound coming from the vent late in the night a couple of nights ago and saw a mouse go by. Tom saw them yesterday morning and said they were Fancy mice that I lost. Impossible, I told him, going by my count. I know how many mice I have and I’d know if any were missing. Also, it would’ve had to have gone down there when it was close to newborn, in order to fit through the vent’s grill, then miraculously survived this long. I would’ve heard chewing sounds long before I did, too.

Anyway, I set up the trap and we’ve got one caught so far, but there’s at least one more down there I’m waiting to catch. Tom’s not sure, but I’m sure it’s a wild mouse. It’s a full-grown male, judging by its well-developed balls, and is half the size Fancy mice get to be. Although its fur is a bit thick and shiny, the colors differ from my other mice. It’s a good-looking mouse. It’s of various shades of brown.

I’ve got it in one of the Play City cages I wished I’d had when I caught Gizzy in Phoenix. It can’t escape this cage. However, I can’t throw it in with the boys with the way it jumps high enough to escape the tank, even though it’s not as spastic as Gizzy was, and I can’t afford to have one or two mice hogging up a cage like that, so I’m going to put it in the wire cage we brought Ratsy home in. A part of it is outside, though, and I have to wait till it’s light and he gets up and goes out to get it.

Later...

Caught the other mouse. This one’s smaller and appears to be a girl. She’s got the same coloring with a slight light spot on her head. I think the boy’s full-grown and that this one’s still young. Jack and Jill may not be able to live in the wire cage because they may slip through the wires. I know Jill could. She slipped through the rungs of the wheel, which is about the same width or smaller. I could’ve sworn the mouse I saw was bigger than these two, so I set up the trap again and will keep on doing so till I stop trapping mice.

Tom saw a dirt-colored snake sitting in the shade of the utility pole a few feet from the house. By the time we went back out with the camera, it was gone.