Category: diary

This is the mouse that lived in the house that Jed built… but let me not get ahead of myself.

We built a house out in the country in the middle of a great big field – and needless to say we have been fighting the introduction of field mice into our house since we first moved in.

Our house is a two story ranch; the first floor is exposed on 3 out of the 4 sides, and we have always been able to contain the mice to the first floor (at least neither we nor our cat have found evidences of mice on the second floor).

However, over the last couple weeks we have been seeing indications from our cat Zia that there could be mice in the upstairs part of the house now. 

As a quick aside, Zia is another animal all together; we warn all friends and family that come over that she is a little schizophrenic; she can be sweet and loving, and begging to be pet one second; and then the next second she will dig her claws into you and claw & bite.  No one ever believes us; until after they have been hit.  Zia is a royal pain in my rear – even though I’m the only person in the house she doesn’t dare to attack – however; she still has some value as a mouser apparently.

Anyway, yesterday was the first time we actually saw signs of the mice upstairs (mouse poop in a drawer) so the war began.  While we believed there was more than one mouse, we only had one trap – and so we set it.  Here is where the story really begins though.

This morning we were woken up to Braeden saying “Oh that’s cute, Zia has a toy mouse”; and it was then followed up with something to the effect of “Bella throw Zia her mouse” (I couldn’t quite hear, because I sleep with earplugs on mornings that I don’t want to wake up at 6 AM by our children).

Scrambling out of bed we found this:

That was the most lifelike toy mouse we have ever seen.  We didn’t have the heart to tell Bella that she was tossing around a dead mouse though.  🙂

If you had asked me this a couple weeks ago, I would have said no.  However, I also realize that most of the pets we have had over the last 10 years, we either did not have until they died, or they were too small to have much interaction with.

Today, our pet rat of two years died.  She had cancerous growths that started earlier this summer; but over the last week we found that she was getting really, really bad; emaciated, loosing some hair, not moving much, not eating much.  We started giving her crackers with peanut butter on it for the last two days, as she would actually eat it – but would eat nothing else.

Today, when I went to give her the food, she took it, put it aside, and then dragged, and pulled her tired body down one cage flight, out onto the door and up against my chest.  She continued to start to climb up onto me, which she had no strength to do.  She hasn’t tried to climb out onto me in a long time.  But today, despite almost no strength she made the unbelievable effort, and she was determined.

I helped her up onto my shoulder which was her final aim; and she tried to climb into my shirt, as she had always done as a baby rat.  I couldn’t let her into my shirt, because she was very sickly and it kind of grossed me out.  However, I stood there for about 15 minutes petting her.  And she started to brux – a sound rats make when they are very happy – they grind their teeth together.  Eventually she stopped bruxing, until Donovan came back over, and started petting her, and she started bruxing again. 

Donovan was upset because she seemed to be crying – he was right – either it was the amount of effort she put into climbing on me, or she was actually crying.  After she got on my shoulder she sat there for a short while, and tears started to come from her eyes – but just a short while later, her eyes were dry again.

It was time for me to go back to work; but I knew she wasn’t going to last the rest of the day; Amanda held her for a while, and then let Donnie hold her.  It was unbelievable to see how calm she was (apart from her very labored breathing) once she got into our arms.

I let Amanda know that she should have the kids say goodbye, and a short while later, stormy died in Donnie’s lap.

The kids of course are devastated; they have never experienced death for something they were very close to.  Amanda told Braeden that we would bury her and she would turn into a flower.  Braeden kept saying to me, “Papa, I don’t want a flower, I want stormy” – a couple times he said “Papa, can’t we pray to God and ask Him to give stormy back to us” – “I know God can bring stormy back, why don’t we just ask”. 

Wow – it was really hard as a father to experience the sorrow of my children from their lost…

But Stormy’s death had a profound impact on me; she knew she was dying and she wanted to spend her last moments with her family – rather than in her cage… profound….