A Mouse in the House

Ok, this happened about a year and a half ago, just a day or so after I returned from my Epic Journey. Many of you heard me mention it on the radio this morning. I never did blog about it, because Dean was acting a little funny about me telling people we had a mouse in the house. (actually, we'd had a HUGE problem which has since been taken care of!!!)

I was home alone, and when I'm home alone I don't cook, I just eat cereal, or toast, or something equally simple. We usually buy those Malt-O-Meal cereals in the bag. I pulled out the Captain Crunch-like stuff, and noticed it was almost gone, so I poured the last of it in my bowl. This made for a HEAPING bowl of cereal!!!1

You know how cereal floats when you pour the milk in? Prepared for this to happen I put my hand over the heaping mound of cereal as I poured the milk so it wouldn't fall all over the counter. Picture my fingers, spread wide across the top of the bowl. Yeah, that's when the cereal started to MOVE BENEATH MY HAND!!!!! Suddenly, from between my splayed fingers, CRAWLS A MOUSE OUT OF THE CEREAL AND OVER MY FINGER, COMING TO REST ON THE SIDE OF THE BOWL!!!!!


Go ahead, squirm if you need to. I am.

You can imagine the scream heard by every neighbor on the BLOCK!

But then, the mouse just SAT THERE!!! He was trying to catch his breath, since a giant hand had just held him under a bowl-full of milk and he was nearly drowned. Poor thing sat there "gasp....gasp...cough...gasp."

Then it occurred to me, "Wow, good blogging moment!" I went to grab my camera only to remember I'd wrecked it the week before on my motorcycle trip, so I grabbed my cell phone instead. Sadly, this was a 2007 cell phone, so the pictures aren't the best.

So here he is, still trying to catch his breath. Can you see him on the left side of the bowl? (I think you can click on the picture to make it bigger.)

I didn't know what to do next, and I kept vacillating between total fascination and the heebie geebies. I can't touch the creepy thing, but it's DYING there, trying to breathe and stuff. I did what any brave soul would do, and put a bucket down on the floor directly beneath the bowl, grabbed the broom, stood as far away as I could and used the broom to push the bowl off the counter so it would fall into the bucket. Can you see him in there?

So, now I have a mouse in a bucket! And a bowl. What does a person do with that??? I took him out to the woods by the side of our house, to the cliff, and tossed the contents. The cereal, milk and bowl flew over the cliff, but the mouse landed about 3 feet from me....and just SAT THERE! The thing was huffing and puffing, still suffering the effects of his lungs being filled with milk. Oh oh...blogging moment. I took a picture of that too! Poor thing. Look at him, all soaked with milk and stuff.

I kept an eye on him for about an hour before he disappeared...into the belly of the resident snake who discovered an easy snack.