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. 🙂