Mouse Tracks

If you ever wondered what it looks like when a small critter bounds through snow twice as deep as he is tall… there you go.

You may be asking how I know for sure these are critter tracks,  as opposed to the much larger varmint tracks, and the answer is duh, I’m a country girl now. Also, I happened to be awake at 4 AM when the cat went on high alert staring out the window, and I just barely caught a glimpse of the little bugger dashing across the snow.

You have to give  him points for tenacity, because a good portion of people I work with couldn’t bring themselves to venture out of the house at the mere thought of a snowstorm today.

And speaking of rodent related tenacity, I know you thought I’d exhausted the number of critter stories I could tell you, what with the decapitated mouse heads, Chuck-Norris-mice, and mice hanging out in my shoes, but I’ve been saving this little gem for you.

Once, when I lived in the city, my cat brought a rat into the house–and actual live rat, not a mouse– and because he was so proud of himself he brought it all the way up to the bedroom to show it off. And then dropped it.

You can imagine the me-chasing-cat-chasing-rat chaos that ensued, and at the end of five sweaty minutes the cat was locked in the closet and I had ingeniously trapped the rat in the full laundry hamper. I even more ingeniously decided to remove the rat from the hamper by dumping all of my laundry out on the front lawn.

Why I chose the front lawn instead of the back lawn is still a mystery to me, just like why I thought the best idea to ensure the rat was long gone was to pick up each article individually–using the very tips of only two fingers– and shake them out.

No rat appeared and I assumed he slipped away as I was meticulously separating a small mountain of socks, until, of course, I picked up a pair of underwear sitting on top of a bra, and the rat took off across the yard wearing the bra like an oversized football helmet.

And that is the story of how I ended up running through my laundry-strewn front yard, waving a pair of hot-pink undies in the air while chasing my runaway bra. It’s also probably why my neighbors were happy to see me move out.

7 Responses

  1. You should enlist the folks at Hyperbole and a Half to illustrate this story. Too funny (since it wasn’t my bra)!

  2. Oh my gosh! I can’t stop laughing! Thank you so much for a little laughter up here in ice encrusted Connecticut – particulary liked Chuck Norris Mouse!

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