The Christmas Mouse!

The Scene: Last night we had a small Christmas dinner party for some friends of ours......what a wonderful evening.....good food, good friends, good bottle of wine! An unusual leisurely Thursday night for us!! All the goodbye's were said, the house was "winding down", everyone was preparing for bed......except for our Cat Gracie.

You see, Gracie is insanely terrified when anyone comes to the house and was outside cowering under the porch (or so we thought).......as she typically does when we entertain. The weather is very mild here, not even close to freezing at night but still, Gracie always comes in at night to sleep with us. This evening as it had started to rain we assumed she was all snug under the porch and simply didn't want to leave her nest as we had called her for several minutes to no avail.

Unbeknownst to us, she was out front, under the bushes with............a friend. After several attempts to bribe Gracie to come inside she comes TEARING from around the corner of the house and dashed inside the house before my husband could barely get the door open.

Now, Gracie by nature isn't a very loving cat......so I'm not sure if her "friend" was one she was wanting to have play time with or had "murder" in her heart......but IN THE HOUSE WITH HER FRIEND SHE CAME!!!! We were just heading to bed as I heard Gracie going nuts in the foyer (evidenced by the incessant ringing of the bell on her collar).....I of course being the busybody that I am went to investigate......what I THOUGHT was one of those tiny little toy fur mice with the little leather tail you buy at the pet store (which come to think of it, I have never bought because of my aversion to mice of any kind) was indeed.........you guessed it........a FREAKIN REAL MOLE/VOLE......and to make matters worse.......it wasn't DEAD!!!!

Commence the screaming (me).....throwing the mole/vole out of it's I'll play dead and maybe this large hairy beast will get bored and I can make my great escape.......into his OH SH*T let me run for my life mode...........oh....and did I mention he was running RIGHT AT ME??????

My DH, who is always there to save my day (insert sarcasm here)........is hollering back to see what I want......now.......when your wife is hysterically SCREAMING your name using an inflection that to my knowledge has never been used in this house......you would think it would elicit at least a SMIDGEON of quick reaction.....

After what seemed like HOURS, my DH gets his pants on, calmly walks into the room, throws a towel, (one of my good ones at that) over the stunned little creature who by this time was "frozen" at the baseboard, me dead ahead, large harry beast to his right, large man coming up from the rear.....frozen.....absolutely frozen, probably saying his prayers as he knows death is imminent.

Said husband then calmly scoops "it" up, walked to the back door, into the yard and pitched the furry little, stunned carcas into the woods. He said it was dead but I saw his little ears sticking up and the gleam in his beady little eyes and let me tell you.......all those little Tasha Tudor stories that I USED to think were so cute????? Well Tasha can kiss my foot!!!). I don't care if it WAS a mole and was only about an inch or so long......in my head it was WILLARD and we were going to be eaten alive in our sleep!!! EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

Much disinfecting took place around midnight, Gracie was banished to the outside (probably with glee to go on another "hunt")........I finally collapsed in bed around 1:00 into a fitful sleep.

NEEDLESS to say I didn't get my scarf blocked but as this is a gift for Saturday I'll do this later today and will post pics!