[Vinniedoggy]

Oh, I've got a good one. About 7 years ago, I bought a condo in DC that was in an old renovated building. I had just adopted Vinnie (the older of my two yorkies). I had not had him long, so wasn't too familiar yet with his habits and such. About a month after moving in, I begin to find some of his kibbles in my shoes (at the time I was feeding him dry food, which I would leave in a bowl). I knew he wasn't too fond of the food, and figured he was hiding his kibbles in protest. I also noticed that he was engaging in some really weird behavior at night. We would be sleeping in bed and he would sit straight up and growl, looking towards the living room/kitchen. Sometimes he would go running off the bed and into the kitchen. I would scold him in my sleep, having no idea what he was barking at.

This continued for about 2 months or so. Sometimes I would notice Vinnie just sniffing like mad around the area of the dishwasher. I really thought he was crazy. However, one night I was sitting on my couch with my laptop. It was really late (around midnight) and I was working on something for school. The lights were off and Vinnie was sitting beside me. All of sudden, I look up and see a mouse poke his head out from near the dishwasher. The mouse goes running out of the kitchen and into the living room, right behind my couch. I let out a squeal and Vinnie barely lifts his head up off the couch, almost saying while rolling his eyes, "I told you so!" Soon after, another mouse comes out running from behind the dishwasher, and then another. Yes, three mice came running out from my kitchen. At that point, I stopped looking because I just didn't want to know.

Turns out that the developer who built my condo failed to put up actual walls behind my kitchen cabinets and dishwasher. My unit was right above the boiler room. In addition, the developer had also been allowing workers to throw their lunch trash down an old trash chute that was not being emptied. So the building had quickly become overrun with mice.

Now, I should note that Vinnie never actually caught a mouse while we lived there, but he did become very adept at letting me "know" where they were hiding. Thankfully, we were able to get rid of all the mice (after a series of exterminations and putting up walls where they were needed). And, this being DC, we were just very grateful that we had mice and not rats.