A Mouse's Tale

A couple of nights ago, I tried to photograph Cristin's cat carrying a mouse through our house. "FINALLY!" we thought. The cat is earning her keep. As I stalked her, she became nervous and dropped the mouse, which immediately scurried away. What a circus we had going for a few minutes, trying to catch the mouse and get it out of the house. Of course my squealing sent Mia into deep hiding, and got Lucky dog running wildly around the house. Craig finally cornered it with my help, bopped it over the head, and tossed it outside. Such excitement is totally uncharacteristic in the O'Brien household, these days.

Fast forward to last night...

Craig and Caleb were shooting their bows off the front porch, when Caleb spotted the dead mouse at the edge of the grass near the landing and pointed it out to Craig...Later, after the men's group had left, while cleaning up, I noticed there, on my chair where I had been sitting, a DEAD MOUSE! EEEEEKKKKK!

I screamed and ran to tell Craig that Mia got another mouse, when he told me that it was probably the one Caleb saw near the landing. He ventured that one of the guys might be trying to pull a prank - couldn't picture Caleb or Eric doing that (though Eric did have quite the nerve showing up in his ugly green Michigan State t-shirt just for MY benefit), so the blame fell on the only other person, Stephen. We got a good laugh and plotted to get him back...Of course, I bagged the dead critter, amazed that it was kinda warm (probably from me sitting on it) and not at all stiff (like I would have expected after a few days) and tossed it in the trash.

This morning, when I went outside to put the cat on her "leash", I almost stepped on a dead mouse - THE dead mouse Craig was talking about near the landing. 8-O But, but...then what was that mouse I threw away last night? EEEKKK! CRAAAAIG! It was a gift from Mia, so, now I am humbled..

Please accept my sincerest apologies and forgive me for publicly (can anything be more public than Facebook?) hinting you would be involved in such devious activity, Steve! Can I make it up? How about dinner, next Tuesday?