A Shrew, a Mouse, and a Chicken Sandwich

As you might be aware, we have had some recent dramatic, traumatic experiences with  family pets.  Namely, Teresa's chicken, happily minding its own business in its new lidded cage, was abducted and presumably consumed by something evil in the night this week. 

The funeral was Kennedy-esque, minus the face veils.   It was raining, so big brother James provided an umbrella for the bereaved Teresa, who carefully held the only feathers we could find.  Roy, KK, Mary, Teresa, James and I slowly walked to the cemetery out where strawberries used to grow.  We  found an empty baking soda box in the recycle bin to contain the feathers.  Roy had prepared a deep hole, and it was Teresa's job to place the "remains" in the hole, then cover it with the first shovel of dirt.  We stood in a circle around the hole looking very serious, then Roy filled in the rest of the dirt and led us in prayer. 

The walk back to the house was noticably easier.  Teresa had a spring in her step.  We realized she wasn't carrying a lot of grief when, a couple of hours after the funeral, she and KK happily shouted to us, "Hey!  We found the chicken's head!"  Roy and I weren't sure whether this was the beginning of a tearful meltdown or simply the glee of successful detetective work around the cage.   Apparently it was the latter, because right after that they started singing and playing on the swings just like any other happy day.  Whew!

That afternoon Roy brought in a tiny furry animal with tail and whiskers.  He found it in the garden.  It was clearly a baby thing, and given the recent sadness I was not anxious for the girls to be disappointed by another death in the family.  We went over our "babies need their mothers" speech, not  unlike the one I recited when they came home with birds.  I might just as well have been speaking Chinese.  Since Teresa thought it was a mouse, and since Mary has been baiting our humane mouse trap with peanut butter, Teresa smeared several spoonfuls of peanut butter on a paper towel for it to eat.  Like, enough to trap its tiny little feet if it had been strong enough to walk.  Then into the plastic bin it went, lid on just in case Sophie the cat wanted to help "take care of it."  The next morning, not surprisingly, it was huddled into a little rodent fetal position.  Mary realized there had been no water, so carefully gave it a drink with drips from her fingers.  It was difficult to tell whether it was drinking or whether it was choking.  Either way, it was dead by the time we identified it with Google images as a baby shrew.

The glad news was that we had a resident in the humane mouse trap.  The official plan was that Roy would take it across town to work, and let it loose there to live a full happy life in the surrounding fields and forest.  The girls made other plans.  Before I knew it KK was scooping peanut butter into a feeding dish and putting the mouse into a spare aquarium.  Is this a little girl version of maternal instinct?   So we have a mouse we lured into the trap with peanut butter now getting all the peanut butter he wants.  There was uncertainty among the girls about whether the spoon went back into the peanut butter jar after the mouse had touched it.   If you come for lunch I promise not to serve peanut butter and jelly.

Apparently Teresa is still thinking about the chicken, though.  She announced today, in the context of a possible road trip to Chillicothe during which a stop at Sonic in Carrollton for lunch would be in order, "I am NEVER going to eat chicken again!  Except the chicken sandwiches at Sonic, because, well, they actually look like fish."   : )