Mystery Solved

My porch snowman has officially been put to rest. We had the strangest event over the Christmas season. My clothes dryer seemed to be taking a long time to dry the clothes, so Dave checked the vent. Yep, there was a lot of lint in there...some green yarn strings and fuzz...now WHAT DID YOU WASH IN THE WASHER?? I kept insisting I had washed nothing that had that yarn in it. This went on for the whole month of December. He'd clean out the lint vent, find the same lint substance, and question me...YOU WASHED SOMETHING AND NOW THE VENT IS PLUGGED WITH THIS STUFF THAT KEEPS WORKING ITS WAY OUT!

Then a couple of weeks ago, he saw THE SAME LINT on the porch Santa IN THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE. The back of the snowman had the yarn and fuzz balls on him. STRANGE! Finally we figured out that the yarn was coming from the ball on the snowman's hat. When we started cleaning up the porch we saw that the blanket I had out there had been chewed by a mouse (or probably a vole, since that's what we fought last summer) and hence the fuzz mixed in with the green yarn.

Now how did a mouse/vole get the fuzz balls back out to the dryer vent on the other side of the house, apparently making a warm little nest of some sort for himself? Today the snowman and the teddy bear went to the curb with the garbage as Dave was not willing to bet that a mouse had not crawled up inside and made a home for himself there. I let it go...didn't have the energy or the nerve to inspect the two items closely for holes or mouse evidence. There was plenty of evidence of mouse droppings under the tree skirt and blanket. Gross. Hope I don't see one in the house again. (We had a dead vole in the basement last summer, and caught several outside.)

Oh, and I'm supposed to check the ice skates carefully before I bring them into the house....ummm, I think I'll let him stick his hands in there when he gets home tonight.