Of Wo(men) and Mice

I was inspired by a fellow blogger who wrote about how long it takes to get out of the house when you have children to tell a story...

Setting the scene:
We live in a very rural area of Vermont on a large dairy farm.  There are literally over 1500 cows here and several hundred of them shit reside in the barn attached to our house.  For you city slickers who don't know, cows eat grain and silage (a delicious fermented amalgamation of chopped up corn stocks).  Another connoisseur of gourmet livestock feed - mice and rats.  They are enormous on farms.  They are more closely related to small bears than other rodentia.  The herd of wild cats don't even make a dent in the vermin population.  I mean, they aren't armed with RPG's, what can they do?

Story time:
So, I had the Yeti on October 25.  Ahhhh fall in New England.  The temperatures drop, the days get shorter, and small furry creatures look for a warm place to live.

I was trying to get the Yeti ready for his two week check up at the doctor's office that is about 45 minutes away.  Don't worry, we park the horse and buggy and take one of those new fangled automobiles up over yonder mountain to see the vet doctor.  In addition to trying to get a two week old baby ready to go to the doc, my mom pleasantly surprised shocked me by taking the day off from work so that she could 'help' me take the Yeti to the doctor.  She had to surprise me because if she had offered, I would have said no.  I'm convinced she thinks I am incapable of keeping another human being alive.  Maybe it was because I lived on coffee, alcohol, nicotine, and Totino's Pizza Rolls for a good ten years.

As I was saying.  I'm elbow deep in car seat straps with a screaming infant and my mother commenting on my inability to buckle said car seat (who can?) when I hear Snarles Barkley the Wonder Cat (who I only see move from her perch to the fed bag to the shitter box when necessary) cause a commotion in the kitchen and clearly crash into the cabinets.  I mistakenly assume it is nothing.

We are currently running ten minutes late.  Mom thinks it is her duty to check on schizophrenic dilusional feline.  The mountain of dishes in my sink flashes through my mind.  Oh fuck it, I have a two week old.

Shrill cry.  HANNAH.  WTF.

I abandon the screaming half buckled infant in the car seat momentarily to see what the HELL is going on in MY kitchen, when I discover that Snarles Barkley's long lost hunting instincts have not failed her.  A rather mutantly large mouse is cornered in front of her (hey, we do live two miles from a nuclear plant that leaks both Tritium and Selenium).  So, I go grab the shotgun broom, with intentions of killing said prey.

I was informed I could not kill the mouse, there is a baby in the house.  To this day, I have no idea what the link is between the two situations.

Huff.  15 minutes late.  Good thing we upgraded from a Model T to a Ford Escape so we can travel faster than the speed of smell.  So I coax the terrified mouse into our mop bucket with an empty cereal box and throw it outside.

You didn't wear gloves.  I didn't wear gloves.  I might catch a disease from not touching the mouse that probably makes our kitchen his playground every night.  Obsessive hand washing per mother's orders.  20 minutes late.  The cat is now pissed I interfered with her kill.  She will sooooo shit in the shower before we get back.