We Need a Pet

I was making dinner in the kitchen, Josh was happily jibber-jabbering in the dining room, but I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. Then Andrew came in and asked, "Mom, Josh keeps talking about a mouse. What mouse?" I told him I had no idea - and didn't think much about it. A little later, Andrew said, "Mom! We have a mouse! Can we keep it!?!" The boys had cornered a tiny brown mouse in the dining room.

And then I remembered that I had left the back door open when we were bringing the groceries in. It was a cold day, our home must have been very warm and inviting to all woodland creatures.

When I went to look at it, it ran away and hid behind our computer. I was very disturbed, but the boys were elated. Andrew wanted to give it some cheese. Josh wanted to take it with us when we had to make a quick trip to a friend's house. I decided to let Randy deal with it when he got home; meanwhile, the boys enjoyed keeping their eyes posted for the next mouse run. When Randy got home, he had the boys help him find it and get it to go outside. The squeals of pure joy from Josh and Andrew trying to chase this little mouse and Randy trying to not kill the thing (for the boys' sake) were so funny to me. But I must admit, that I let out a few (terrified) squeals myself watching them chase it around! They did manage to get the mouse out of our house unharmed.

We had a similar incident last Fall (where I, again, left the back door open), but that one didn't fare as well. Luckily, the boys were asleep when it met its demise with my stealthy mouse-hunting-husband.