Quiet Please, the Mice Are Sleeping

We live in an old farmhouse on acreage. We have a field; the field has blackberries. The blackberries are a commune for field mice. The field mice occasionally discover our laundry room and mistakenly think it's a 5-star hotel.

We also have two cats, both FIV- positive rescues. One cat (Amber) is from outer space and simply arrived one day, asking to rent a room in exchange for work around the house. This alien is quite useful as we only see her every couple of days; the other (Joshua) is from the streets of Philly and showed up with torn ears, the worst breath we have ever encountered and believes he has found Nirvana in the Gunnels residence. He is, at any given time, sitting on a family member and requesting food.

So the alien, in exchange for room rent, rids the house of unwanted field visitors. The street cat typically watches the alien working and says, "Better you than me, Sister. Now where's my tuna?"

We can hear Amber skipping through the house at night every so often, playing keepaway with some poor shmuck of a mouse who was only looking for late-night room service. And then, in true cat fashion, she deposits the rodent directly in the path of anyone heading the bathroom in the middle of the night. However, on one occasion, she chose to place the "sleeping" mouse inside the shoe of the preteen daughter who also lives here, apparently believing that this is what Earthlings enjoy discovering right before school.

Thankfully, I found it before daughter did, thus saving piercing screams and expensive therapy. I was unable to write about this incident at the time because the kids do read my blog and I figured daughter would never wear the shoes, or possibly ANY shoes, for the rest of her life and frankly they were brand-new shoes. I couldn't resist finally telling her, though, and by this time she was able to laugh about it.

I noticed she hasn't worn those shoes yet, though.

Goats in the Garage

So the husband and I are out in the goat yard trying to Reno-proof the fencing yet again. It's like he has strings attached to him and some mysterious puppet master periodically yanks him up and deposits him on the other side of the fence. Usually on the side where my flowers and vines prefer to be left alone but are disappearing rapidly.

I shooed the twins out to the south forty and husband and I sat and stared at the fence. After about ten minutes of that, I walked around the garage to check on the goats, who have been known to sneak off to 7-11 for Slurpees when left unattended. The goats now seem to be MIA. I yelled at Joe and asked him where the goats are, and he just looked at me, as if I hadn't been sitting next to him for ten minutes, staring at the fence.

So now we're in the garage, staring at each other, when we hear TAP TAP TAP. ABOVE our heads, mind you. I said, "WHAT is THAT?" and the tapping suddenly stopped. I went to the stairs and hollered up into the empty storage space, "You two better NOT be playing where you don't belong!" and the tapping returned, closer to the stairs, closer.....until two black and white goatie heads peeked around the corner, looked down at me with their goatie ears a flappin' and then they came tip tapping down the stairs, comfy as can be.

They waltzed past me, glanced at Joe, who was still staring at the ceiling with just a hint of a tear in his right eye, and headed back to their pen. Upon inspection of the storage space, I found two empty Slurpee cups and a copy of The National Inquirer, but I will simply choose to believe that my children left them there. Right? Right? Someone, please.... tell me I'm right.