I Don't Do Dead

This morning things were going pretty smooth - I got on my 7am work call on time, the dogs had been let out, I remembered all my vitamins and ate a nice breakfast. My headache from the night before was gone, and regardless of the horrid sleep I got last night, I felt pretty good.

Then I realized how weird my cats were acting, and it hit me: we have a mouse in the house. All the construction from the bathroom must have stirred it up! A few years ago, this wasn't an issue for me; when my mom wrenched me out of my bed at 4:30 am squealing about a mouse under the couch (the couch which she had violently turned over so the mouse couldn't escape), I actually laughed at her, picked up the tiny mouse (it was smaller than a pack of matches) and whisked him out through the damp yard and freed him. That was then - when there was someone else terrified and I had to be the brave one.

Now, I get to be the one to freak out. The year we first moved in, I came home for lunch one day and there was a recently departed mouse in the middle of my dining room floor. That did it for me - I don't do dead things. I ran to my neighbor pleading for her help to rid me of the tiny mouse body. And thankfully, she did. Now, a couple of years later, I've got a very live one, quivering under my dining room hutch waiting for its chance to run back to the hole it came from. I locked up the cats and prayed that the dogs just wouldn't notice it- giving my husband time to come to our rescue (mine and the mouse's) with a live trap.

Sure the germs bother me, and I certainly don't want the dogs / cats to catch anything from their mousey conquest. However, I'm mostly upset for the mouse. I'd like to see it released into the wild (anywhere but my house!) and have it go along its happy little mouse life. Sure, the circle of life may have other plans for the mouse out there, but at least this way it could have a chance! So call me crazy, but ignorance is bliss and I just don't do dead.