Mousecapades

We have been invaded by two teeny tiny thieves. Two little mice - the tiniest I've ever seen - have taken up residence in our house. They don't seem to be very shy since they tend to come out and keep us company (especially when I have friends over) and I know they are light-weight since I have seen them sitting on the traps eating peanut butter without disturbing the snapping mechanism. After a couple of days of this, we decided to maybe try something else, so we put a little D-con under a drawer where we figured the hideout was. CTP wasn't really into the poison idea - he was stalking the mice with a pair of tongs claiming he wanted to squish them to death. Nice.

Of course yesterday while I had two friends and their combined four children over for lunch the mice made their usual appearances. Due to their rather NOT shy nature I decided to just trap one, which I easily did. Of course, once CTP saw the tiny creature his attitude of being the bearer of horribly painful death changed into, "Can we keep him?" I tried to explain about wild mice bringing filth and sickness into our home but he didn't much care. He came unglued when I tried to talk about other means of extermination or even letting it go. So we waited for a few hours, C periodically checking in on our new pet.

By the end of the day, it had become obvious that the mouse had eaten some poison and was very sick. I talked C into letting it go so it wouldn't get more sick....I couldn't think of anything else to tell him. We took it to the very back of our yard and let it go where I could see it was in dire straights. C wanted to make a sandwich for it. Hey, a sandwich always picks me up when I'm down.

Well, I got him distracted enough to come in (and WASH HANDS) and do our evening stuff and go to bed. I had forgotten about it - I figured the other mouse had/would suffer the same fate as the first (minus four hours in a Tupperware container) and let it go. That was until today when C was playing outside and came to me with the dead mouse IN HIS HAND (AHHHHHHHHHH!) - actually, that's what I really said. I scared him so bad he threw the mouse on the floor and burst into tears, which he was close to anyhow due to his pet's discovered death.....man. Sometimes I seriously need a parenting manual. After further hand washing we did some talking about the passing of animals into the Heavenly Realms and he seemed to feel better. Sweetly, he did mention that Alex wasn't ever going to die. This I take as a good sign of C's affection for Alex, which isn't always clear. Mostly C likes to torment him or ignore him. Lately he has taken to feeding him his toast crusts - yes, he's realizing the true purpose of dog ownership. I hope their relationship continues to blossom.

Anyhow, as a final note of C's new contemplations regarding the circle of life, tonight for dinner as I gave him a piece of chicken, he asked, "Mom, is this the part of the used-to-be-alive and now-is-dead chicken?" Pause. "Yes." What else could I say?