To The Rescue

Mamakat's Pretty Awesome Writing Prompt: 1.) Share a story about a stray you took in or an animal you once rescued.

We are animal lovers in this house.  We watch Animal Planet, National Geographic(the channel with the animals, not the one with all the prison shows),  Discovery, etc.  We have spent time with Planet Earth and Blue Planet.  We have had dogs.  We have even had a goldfish named Bob.  We also have cats.  We have two inside cats, and we have several feral cats that we feed and water but otherwise leave alone. 

When we came home from the movies yesterday(Amazing Spiderman, of course!),  I heard a *squeak-squeak-squeak* sound as I unlocked the front door, but I dismissed it as one of the barnswallows that are currently housed in a nest above our door.  My husband happened to look down, however, and he saw a little mouse lying on its side.  He mentioned it to me, and I went outside to scoop it up with a paper plate and put the carcass in the garden, out of the sight of my son.  Poor mouse, I thought, as I bent over.

Only this mouse was not deceased.   It lay there, tiny and forlorn, breathing rapidly. 

I stood up quickly; this was an entirely different situation.  Because, ew.  A freakin' mouse!  I am just girlie enough to be a little disconcerted by the idea of a little mouse running about.  I stepped to the door to alert Larry, just as the little critter awoke from its faint and righted itself.

"Larry, get me some gloves to pick this mouse up,"  I cracked the door and told him.  "It is still alive."

I waited, both eyes on the mouse, who had moved nearer to the wall and was looking around furtively, trying to recover.  I planned on scooping the mouse up with the gardening gloves, thinking that the fabric would be thick enough to resist any mouse bites.

The door opened.  Larry  passed me a pair of gloves.  Surgical gloves.  He hands me...surgical gloves.

"I can't pick up a mouse with these!"

"Why not?"

"I need those thick gloves that a mouse wouldn't be able to bite through,"  I said.  (I get so frustrated when my husband doesn't read my mind!)

"I don't know where those are."  

The front door was open, and Zane was standing uncertainly close.  He was a little curious, but unsure of what we were discussing.  I beckoned him over.

"Zane, do you want to see the mouse?" 

Of COURSE Zane wanted to see the mouse!  He came running.  I showed him the mouse, and he talked to it, cooing and admiring.  Meanwhile, I was busy screwing up my courage.  Taking a deep breath, I leaned down and picked up the mouse by the tail. It hung, suspended, by my fingers.  I looked at it, twirling there, and mentally congratulated myself for not immediately dropping the poor thing and running into the house while screaming.  Instead, I placed it on the plate, where the poor thing passed out again.  I mentioned to Zane that we needed to find a place for the mouse to hide until it felt better.  Zane had an idea.

Bring the mouse into the house, my sweet child who loves all animals tells me.   I again did not throw my hands in the air and run screaming at the idea.  While I placed the mouse safely underneath a mountain laurel tree, I spoke to Zane about the mouse being a wild animal and how wild animals were meant to be outside animals. 

That did not compute.  So I talked to him about how wild animals were allergic to air conditioning and how this mouse would eat all of his cereal bars and play all of his video games, and did he want to share his favorite Lego Batman pajamas with a mouse? 

Thankfully, my son was not in the mood to share yesterday.   And the mouse was not really all that excited about the idea of pajamas, I could tell.

But Was It Ironic?

Note:  This story was told to me by Lori, but it happened awhile ago, and so some of the facts may be murky or completely fabricated as my brain tried to fill in the blanks.  But the end result was still the same! 


A colleague of mine was working in her office one afternoon.  Her two children had been dropped off by the school bus, and they were working on their homework while their mother was finishing up a few projects. 

"Mom!  My backpack moved!"  Her son moved nervously to her side, and her daughter joined them. They gathered together protectively and then turned to look.  Indeed, the outer pocket of the backpack was wiggling, as if something were trying to get out.  Momentary pandemonium ensued, as all parties freaked out a bit.

"C, what do you have in your backpack?" Lori was no idealist; she knew that boys tend to collect the random animal as the opportunity presented itself.  C. insisted that he had no idea what was in his backpack. 

Then Lori remembered C.'s teacher mentioning that a mouse had been spotted in the classroom that week.  Could that mouse have accidentally hitched a ride?  How did it get into the backpack? Was there anything else in that backpack besides a mouse--say two mice?  One thing was sure: whatever was in that backpack was not going to be set free inside her office. 

Down the hall to the elevator the three of them went.  Out the door to the small back parking lot.  The backpack pocket was opened...and the mouse scurried out and made a beeline for the other side of the parking lot, where a ditch full of tall grass offered a refuge from loud fourth graders.  Lori and her children watched the mouse's progress as it briefly hid underneath cars then raced ever closer to sanctuary. 

Finally, the mouse was there!  The trio watched as the mouse disappeared into the ditch.  They had rescued the mouse, released it back into the "wild" of  New Braunfels.  There was a brief pause,  to consider the entire episode before heading back upstairs.

...And that is when the cat ran out of the ditch with the mouse in its mouth. 

My Girlie-Girl Side Was Showing

When I was living with my First Cat, Isobel, I knew next to nothing about cats. I knew that she was a cat, and that was next to nothing. I had to take her to the vet to even find out that she was a girl. But we settled into a nice routine, and life was good. Until Isobel decided that I was not contributing sufficiently to the household.

When a cat sees you as an equal, they bring you their kills to share. If a cat thinks that you're an idiot, they bring you LIVE creatures so that YOU can learn to kill them. Isobel started off bringing me dead things, including a white-wing dove that she left underneath my coffee table. I didn't discover that until I hit the poor dead bird with my foot, and I am sure that Isobel got quite a bit of enjoyment watching me hop around with a roiling case of the heebie-jeebies.

Then Isobel started bringing me live things--lizards, toads, small birds, a gigantic cockroach, etc. She would come to the door, meowing until I opened it, then she would walk in and drop her prize. I try to pretend like I'm a tough chick, and when I was single I handled all these creepy-crawly things by myself. I am embarrassed to say this now, but I acted just like all those ridiculous girlie-girl stereotypes. I would squeal hysterically, jump on the couch, run around waving my arms in the air, and generally have a conniption. (I am not casting aspersions on girlie-girls, but that has never been descriptive of my personality.)

The neighbors likely thought I was being murdered, but all I was doing was trying to safely catch whatever critter Isobel had dropped and herd it out the door. Well, except for the cockroach--I pounded that thing so hard that it separated into individual atoms(I have a phobia, and it makes me wacky). Isobel would sulk for days when I would release her prisoners, as if she despaired of my ability to feed myself if she weren't around. My girlie-girl spaz-out was a completely involuntary response on my part, and once I calmed down, I always hoped that nobody saw me flailing about in my apartment.

And for many, many years, my secret was safe. Even the person who knows me best, my husband, had no idea.

Until last night.

I looked outside on our patio and saw our cat Zena heading our way*. She had something in her mouth and a determined look in her eye, which flashed me back to Isobel. I said a very bad word and rushed outside. I had to chase Zena around for a couple of minutes, but I got her to drop what was in her mouth, scooped her up and threw her in the house.

Then I looked down.

It was a dead mouse. On my patio. A dead mouse.

I did what most people do in these situations.

"EEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!"

Yep. I went into full-on girlie-girl mode, screaming, running around, and just completely losing my damn mind over that dead mouse. I was so completely hysterical that I didn't even realize that I was in my backyard.

Until I saw my neighbor out on his patio, watering the grass. And another neighbor grilling. And a bunch of kids playing on their trampoline.

Even that German Shepherd, who never stops barking, was silently staring at me, mouth agape.

I shivered, still feeling those heebie-jeebies, and 'calmly' walked back into my house. I took a deep breath and nicely asked my husband to please go outside and dispose of the mouse carcass. He did it, but he teased me unmercifully about it.

If anyone asks, I'm going to say that I had a bee down my shirt.



*We don't 'let' Zena outside. She usually gets out before we even notice, because she is that fast. Luckily, she knows where we live.