Two Doodles, a Chicken, and Field Mice!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

My dogs and I walk every day up at our nearby park.  I love to walk in the cold weather, because I don’t have to worry about snakes.  I hate snakes and since I am always frantically looking for them, I usually am the one to see them on our walks.  I also know when I am walking with my husband and he turns suddenly and says, “let’s go a different way,” that translates to “snake up ahead and husband does not want to have ear drums blown out by screaming wife.”  How I raised two kids who are not afraid of snakes, I do not know, but I did.  When they were little, whenever we went to a petting zoo or someone came to school with a Reptile show, my two little darlings would be the first ones to raise their hands if they asked for volunteers to come up closer to see the snake.

 

Once, they helped hold a very large snake that could have easily dined on them for supper and I turned to the woman next to me and told her, “If that thing wraps itself around my daughters and starts squeezing, I am really going to miss those two when they are gone.”  No motherly instinct to protect my children kicked in at any point during that demonstration, just sheer horror.  One other time, I went to school to pick up my oldest daughter and she came towards me with two small snakes wrapped around her arms. It seemed her teacher’s daughter brought in her pet snakes and my daughter thought it would be a good idea to test her mother’s reactions in the hallways of her school.  Let’s just say we both knew that day that she could have asked for anything and gotten it by threatening to put that snake on me, but she also knew that eventually she had to relinquish those snakes back to the rightful owner and go home with her mother.  In the end, she made the right choice, the one that allowed her to walk the halls of that school without being pointed at and called, “the girl with the handprint tattoo,” mistakenly doled out by a mother thrashing about in a panicky attempt to escape.

 

Another time, while the girls and I were visiting with my in-laws overnight, they had a bat in the house.  They had wisely not told me they were having trouble with bats before our arrival, because I am sure they realized, if they had, they would never see their grandchildren again at their house after dusk and we would have stayed at a nearby hotel.   Upon our arrival, my sister-in-law informed me that they had had a “little trouble” with a bat in the house the previous nights.  Now, in my book, a “little trouble” means there is a part of your hair you can’t get right in the morning, it does not mean a wild creature, that has been featured in every Vampire movie you have ever seen, is flying loose throughout the house where you are now staying.  She also told me not to worry because the bat never came out after midnight and proving, once again, that desperate people are inclined to believe anything, I felt safer since it was nearing that mark.  Well, sure enough, that bat made an appearance after midnight and I barricaded myself in my room like I was starring in one of those Slasher movies.  Thankfully, my sister-in-law had taken cover in the room where my daughter’s were staying and kept them company for the night.  I tried to yell reassuring words to them from across the hall, but they later said, “we are all going to die,” did not comfort them.  They also wanted to know why I didn’t come to them to make sure they were ok and I made a mental note to myself to start encouraging them to watch Roseanne and lay off the Hallmark movies.

 

Why am I telling you all this? Not because I want you to see that my motherly motto is, “survival of the biggest, loudest, and most afraid,” but because I want you to understand the magnitude of my fears when it comes to stuff like snakes, bats, and mice, which finally leads me to the point of this blog.  So, getting back to my walk in the park…I have been happily walking with my dogs in the cold weather without a care in the world.  I told myself that there is nothing to fear.  All of God’s creatures, that I hate, are on hiatus until summer.  From time to time, we see the occasional groundhog, deer, or squirrel, but they don’t bother me, so I never put two and two together as the dogs and I walked along in the grass.  Sure, I have seen them bury their noses in the flattened grass and I have seen both of them leap in the air as if they just stepped on something, but I just assumed they were smelling the horses that walk on the same trail and jumping for joy to be on our walk. 

 

Sunday, while walking with the dogs and my husband, Fudge and Vern excitedly buried their noses in the grass, like they always do, and my husband said, “they must smell all the field mice that burrow themselves in the matted down grass.” WHAT?  “You mean to tell me, the mice have not hitched rides on the backs of some accommodating birds and gone south for the winter?” I asked him.  So, he went on to tell me, and this is why I hate those nature shows that educate people, the winter habits of mice, and I told him I prefer to live in my state of ignorant bliss and things got heated and he said I should stop advertising that fact and I told him to stick his head in the tall grass and choke on a mouse and he said I was real mature and I said I know you are, but what am I, and he knows I can say that forever, so we stopped arguing. The damage is done, however, and now I know that on my walks with my dogs, I am putting myself in great peril and there is a possibility that one mouse with a faulty GPS system is going to go up my pant’s leg when he should have gone down, and my life will be over.   I know what you are all thinking….there goes Fudge and Vern’s walks, but come on, we are talking about Fudge and Vern, my four legged babies.  I just need to find my snow gators to thwart those wayward mice or stop conversing with my husband on our walks.  I had better start looking for my gators.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Bonnie, Remind me never to go in a tunnel in England....yuck!! I love the children's zoo in Fort Wayne. It is really the only zoo I like, and I always go to the bat cave. I can't explain it, but I can't look away....LOL. However, my DH likes to come up behind me and touch the back of me and see if I scream.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Camilla, I hope you did not scare her, like you tried to do with the fake poop :)

Nancy, A RAT....OMD. I would move and never come back...LOL!! If my Christmas stuff was still up, I might try to use that an excuse, though, to get out of putting it away, too!!

BG, I am definitely a chicken about those things. Vern takes after me :)

Joyce, Thank you for the suggestion!! Or I could just walk on asphalt....LOL!!

Doris, I agree with you! My husband said the snakes help with mice, but who cares? I don't like either. They all need to move out of our neighborhoods.

F, I think a few of those mice have made it into our house too. Why can't my cat pull her own weight around here? You have, once again, made some very valid points....LOL!

Donna, I remember your blog. I hate snakes and mice, but I could never put a live mouse in with a snake. I was rooting for the mouse in your story and think your DH learned a valuable lesson...LOL!  Thankfully, I will never own a snake, so I don't have this problem, although my DH had snakes while growing up.  That poor Gerbil. I hope he lived a happy life with you and forgave you after you tried to kill him :) Here I thought you were mice nice :)

Deanna, A Hazmat suit might be better, now that I think about it...thank you! My oldest daughter is afraid of spiders and they don't bother me at all. She always says, "how would you feel if it was a snake?" and she does have a good point.

Pat, MOVE....LOL!!

[Camilla and Darwin]

LOL, my mom is like you when it comes to snakes. Made for VERY fun/interesting camping trips.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

I am with you... My kids told me we have a rat in the garage so I no longer reset the sprinklers because the timer is in there.  My Christmas decorations were out there and now I can't put them away - that is my excuse anyway.  When my boys had their pet snakes, iguanas, lizards they never informed me when they got loose - they just shut their doors until they found them again. If I had known, I would have moved out!!!!

[BG and Gavin]

So where is the chicken?  Oh, I get it, the chicken is YOU!  You are not a chicken Laurie, you just have a healthy respect for all of God's creatures be them great or small or slithery!

[Joyce & Wilson]

Laurie..you could put bike clips or rubber bands around your pant legs so they couldn't run up your legs!  Just a heartfelt suggestion!  lol

[Doris, Knox & Flash]

Here's my feelings on snakes:  The ONLY good snake is a DEAD snake.  Same goes for mice and bats.  I know they must be good for something but I have no clue what!   

[F, Calla & Luca]

@Donna, how did I miss thisBlog? At any rate, I now see your DH had enormous quirks long before the ice biting incident. BTW, you wouldn't want to know haow the stun mice in labs or did in the olden days.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Do not worry at all. I am here to set your mind at rest. Every mouse on the east coast made it into my basement this fall, I think they were having a mouse romp. I use humane traps like some of the others. Only with the kind I use, the mice die quickly while thinking a nice peanut butter treat is coming. Sounds fair to me. Did they pay the mortgage or heating bills. So they should stay outside and leave us alone or else. Putting them back out only would make them think this is a game.

[Donna K & Quincy]

LOL, Now I see where Vern gets his bravery from. I hope you continue to have lots of mice nice walks and enjoy all those mice nice winter days. Thanks for another mice nice blog. Have a mice nice day. Here's a link to a blog I wrote awhile ago, I think you will be able to appreciate this. BTW, I hate creepy furry little rodents too.

http://www.doodlekisses.com/profiles/blogs/mouse-tales