The last few days it's been incredibly cold in the big MO. Well, okay, not cold. It's been incredibly COOL. No false information here. Anywho, as what I can only presume is a direct result of that change in temperature, the mice that live in the family room that was once an outside room and is now closed in and serving as a spare bedroom/Kashmir's shitroom/tv room/general shit room have lost their damn minds and started running about. In a house. With humans. AND CATS!!!!
I was walking through the kitchen Saturday night when I noticed that Jude was paying awful close attention to SOMETHING. I followed his line of site and saw a baby mouse lying about a foot away from him. The mouse was not moving, so I immediately assumed s/he was dead. I moved closer and saw hir move a few inches. At this point, I immediately called my mother, not because I was scared OF the mouse, but because I am a big ole softy and was sure that if I picked hir up, I'd try to keep hir. My mom picked the baby mouse up in a plastic sack and handed it to me to take outside.
Now, you have to understand, blog, I have been a bit of an emotional wreck lately. My anxiety is out of control, I hadn't been sleeping well, and I am just generally lonely. Hopefully this will explain what happened next. I crouched down to tip the mouse out of the bag into the FREEZING cold wild (I am serious. It was below freezing Saturday night) and the mouse just sat there, shaking and staring at me. I immediately picked hir up, clutched hir to my chest and started BAWLING and telling my mom I couldn't put it out, that it'd die and could I PLEASE OH PLEASE KEEP IT?! PLEEEEEEEEASE?!
Yeah. It was bad. She relented and told me I could keep the baby mouse (SQUEEEEEE!) and we called Samantha to have her come home to help me find an aquarium/terrarium for hir to live in. While waiting, the mouse and I sat in the aforementioned family room, me whispering comforting thoughts to the poor shaking thing. It was at this point that I heard a scratching noise across the room and see that both Jude and Lucy are stalking a brown paper sack in the vicinity. I walk over, baby mouse in tow, open the sack and see that it is full of toys. And another baby mouse. I know, it was intense!
Once Samantha arrived, she punched holes in an old ice cream tub. We lined it with paper, lettuce, tortilla chips, and peanut butter. I took an old medicine cup and cut the BULK of the top off to make a shallow dish for water. I set the first mouse in the new, but temporary home, while Samantha attempted to catch the other baby mouse who was trying to JUMP out of the brown paper sack. I grabbed the feisty mouse and placed hir in the tub with hir sibling.
They thoroughly enjoyed the peanut butter! Shortly thereafter, my mom noticed that Cooter had something in her mouth. Upon inspection, I discovered that she had captured and killed ANOTHER baby mouse. She was carrying hir around in her mouth and showing off to Lucy and Jude.
I couldn't be mad at her because I love her too much! Anyway, it was at about this point that I realized I was being irrational and that keeping the mice would be out of the question. I decided to harbor them until the morning at which point it would be MUCH warmer and I would be able to release them in the field next to our house GUILT FREE. While sitting in the family room that started this whole debacle discussing my intentions with my mother, I heard a scratching sound in a chest of drawers that all three cats had taken post around. We went through all of the drawers and in the top drawer, once full of the seeds for my mom's garden, we found another damn baby mouse! We pulled the drawer out and when I tried to catch hir to add to the tub of mice, the wily thing jumped out of my hands and ran across the room where s/he probably still is as we speak.
I released the two I kept in the tub the following morning and felt like I had done a great deed. Samantha informed me I was a monster and condemning them to death. HA. WHO IS IRRATIONAL NOW, LITTLE SISTER?!
