Just when I thought I had nothing to blog about today.....

This morning, around 6:30, Eric showed up in our room and, in his most important big-guy 5- year-old voice informed us that there was a mouse in our living room.

"A what?"
"There's a mouse in our wiving room!"
"A mouse?"
"It's sitting by the pwayroom door!"

I froze while Mike ran downstairs with Eric. I mean, of course it wasn't really a mouse. Alice probably threw up a hairball or something. So I lay there, not moving, and then I heard Mike open the back door and quickly shut it. The sound of a mouse quickly being tossed outside.

Sure enough, it was a mouse. It was actually pretty cute. A little furry black thing with a twitchy nose and tiny little tail. It clearly had already dipped into the rat poison we have placed around the perimeter of the house because it could barely move, which is how Mike was able to grab it and toss it outside on the deck.

Eric than ran upstairs to grab Ryan and show him the mouse. Ryan came staggering down the stairs and the first thing out of his mouth was "did Alice find it?". I looked him straight in the eye and told him that Alice is useless. Alice is the only being in our house who does not know about the mouse. Ryan nodded in agreement.

The whole time, Eric is jumping around in his NASCAR underwear, spouting off more very important 5-year-old boy things in his most big-kid voice:

"I think it was looking for cheese"
"Maybe we should kill it and then let Alice play with it"
"I hate mouses, becept Jerry"

This is the second wildlife creature Eric has encountered in as many days. Yesterday he spotted a deer in our back yard, standing by our deck. As this is just the beginning of spring, we've only skimmed the surface of the variety of creatures we will encounter in and around our domicile this season: frogs, possums, raccoons, snakes, bats, more deer and, although we have yet to see for ourselves, there are actually bears in the area. Being 34 years older than Eric, I just don't get as excited as he does when I find a squirrel sitting on my kitchen table eating our leftover lunch.

I think I know where the mouse came from--same room as our last squirrel visitor. Our unfinished-many-openings-into-the-bowels-of-our-house-bathroom. Although we did patch the big hole in our ceiling, I clearly see how a little mouse can squeeze his way through the gaping hole where the drywall does not meet the floor and has been waiting ever so patiently for molding.

You have to admit, this posting is much more refreshing than listening to me whine incessantly about my piles of unfinished knitting, the sweater class I'm going to audit tonight, and that horrid wretched strawberry hat that I finally finished only to discover that it didn't fit me very well, so I took it apart again and threw it on the coffee table where it remains in a big bloody half knit heap. I may use it to strangle the next mouse.

VERMIN UPDATE: Since this posting, we have witnessed a giant raccoon trying to break into our shed. We're sitting at the kitchen table, having lunch, watching this humongous raccoon. Seriously, is this some kind of cruel joke? Are one of you dropping these animals off when I'm not looking just to watch my reaction? Some kind of twisted candid camera?