kiwords

Remember the mouse drama a while back? Well, you may have noticed an utter lack of mouse drama. You may have assumed that since the house was clearly surrounded by a mouse free zone, our mousy problems were over.

Yeah.

Well.

See, what ACTUALLY happened was that there was a rash, a SPATE if you will, of mouse abandonment. In my actual room. Over and over again Claire (our beautiful, stupid cat) went out into the night, captured and stunned a mouse, scurried home with it, and LET IT GO. In MY ROOM. Because she loves me. So. After a few weeks of finding dead or dying mice in my room, I put my foot down. I also put down the door to the kitty door, barring the great white huntress from her happy hunting grounds. Mom forbid me to speak of the situation here, for fear that you all would think we had mice.

“THAT’S BECAUSE WE DO,” I told her, “or at least I DO. Gah.”

Once the door was closed, the mouse appearances stopped. After a few weeks Claire stopped yowling at the door…as much…and peace reigned.

Until today.

See, Claire’s still longing to roam free, and occasionally she escapes. A couple of days ago Raphael was playing with the cat door and pulled it open. I saw him over there, pushing trucks through the opening, but it didn’t OCCUR to me until later that the cat door was open, thankyouverymuch, and thereby allowing a MOUSE PORTAL into, well, my BEDROOM. I don’t know why. I didn’t even think about it until I saw Claire slip out that night. I was on my way to bed and I watched her disappear into the night. I debated chasing her down, or waiting up to close the door after she came back. But in the end shrugged and went to bed.

The next morning all was well, which may explain why I failed to close the dang cat door all day. I sort of figured, somewhere back in my mind, that perhaps Claire was over the whole mouse-collecting thing. Perhaps she’d moved onto other, more productive pursuits. Bomb making, for instance.

This morning, as I was getting dressed, Max yelled up the stairs,

“HEY MAMA! THERE’S A PART OF A MOUSE IN THE SUNROOM!”

I could have gone my whole life without hearing that particular sentence. Oh yes, I could have.

But no.

There was indeed a part of a mouse in the sunroom. In specific, it was the part of a mouse that wasn’t the head. I picked it up with several layers of Wal-Mart bag between my fingers and it. The layers weren’t quite thick enough to prevent me from feeling the tiny heft of its wee body, so I was a bit late for church. You know, what with all the hand scrubbing and muttering.

But I recovered enough to take the kids to the park this afternoon. As they played I sat on the sidewalk, watching the many kids and the swirling society of the playground. I chatted with Mom and Dad and peered at the clouds. I glanced to my left, where I saw…

A dead mouse.

Most of a dead mouse.

And many, many flies.

Now, as this park is a good ten miles from my house, I’m FAIRLY sure that Claire isn’t responsible. You understand, though, that I was already traumatized? Is that clear? And then there was this thing, this remnant of a carrier of the Black Death, just decomposing there, next to the slide?

I probably shouldn’t mention this part, but when Dad picked it up with two sticks, it dripped.

I will never be the same.

So tonight, after the kids were in bed, Clay and I were going to watch a video. While he set up the video, I ran upstairs to check on the kids. I went in my room for something, and when I opened my door this thought hit me:
It doesn’t smell right in here.

Then:

Huh. It really smells kind of WRONG in here.

Then:

I should check under the bed.

So I did.

It’s amazing how bad one tiny mouse can smell. I mean, it couldn’t have been more than an ounce of dead mouse flesh.

One day. Three mice. And I disposed of 2/3 of them.

Don't I deserve a medal or something?