About an inch of snow fell last night. With the sun glinting off the ice crystals, the morning is a pretty one, but it’s cold out. I swept the snow from the walk and my car windows, got the paper then ran inside to the warmth of the house. I’ll have to venture onto the deck later as the feeders are empty.
No mouse was in the trap this morning though the trap had been sprung, but the peanut butter was still there so one of the cats could very well have been the culprit as the trap is so sensitive to touch. I’ll reset the trap and put it back in the eaves, but I haven’t found a mouse in a few days. Gracie is a bit disappointed. She enjoys her late evening mouse runs. The last mouse was my favorite. It was let loose near some woods and to get there it ran, hopped, ran and hopped again. I watched it until it disappeared into the woods. As always, I wished it well.
I had hamsters once. The guy at the pet store swore they were both males; he was half right. Those hamsters had several babies, but I did find homes and then put the two of them in separate cages. Those cages were in my bedroom. The female hamster learned how to open the cage and escaped often even after we closed it with more wire. One of the cats captured that hamster and was playing with it in the bathtub. The hamster would try and climb the side to get away, and the cat would bring it right back. It was like the Myth of Sysyphus without the rock. My mother saved the hamster which, you find later in the story, was a bit ironic. I had one of those furry rugs popular in the 60’s. It was a round one on the floor in my bedroom. The rug was bright pink. The hamster pulled it close to the cage and chewed off a section of the rug for her nest. It was one pretty colorful nest, and I had a rug with a circular piece missing. People saw the rug with the missing piece but never asked. I would have been curious. Eventually the male hamster died and the female escaped. It lived somewhere in the house, but we didn’t find it until later, until its demise. The hamster had been living behind the stove, and when my mother turned on the stove one time, the hamster, the same one my mother had saved, bit into a wire and was electrocuted. We called my mother the Lord High Executioner for a while. She never really warmed to that name.
