Last night, Jade woke up in the middle of the night, so I got up and sat on the couch to feed her (it was the quickest way to get back to sleep 😉 All the lights were off, so I couldn’t see anything. However, I could hear. And what I heard made me tuck my feet into the couch cushions.

Georgie, the cat, was chasing and playing with something. Now normally, that wouldn’t bother me. The children are forever leaving things on the floor, so Georgie is always playing around with something. However, this something he was playing with let out the occasional – squeak!

I was of course convinced it was a mouse. I finished feeding Jade and was faced with a dilemma. There was no way, I was putting my bare feet down on the floor and walking in the dark from the living room to the girls’ room, and then all the way back to my room in the dark! But I wanted to go to sleep!

Jade was asleep in my arms, so I carefully crawled on the couch to the light switch and managed to get the light turned on. The coast was clear – so I dashed to the girls’ room, gently laid Jade in her bed, and dashed back to the couch.

Now for the tricky part – I had to turn the light off, and get to my bed. Well, all I can say was I ran as fast as I could and leaped onto the bed. (And even then Jim didn’t wake up!) I was safe, and went right back to sleep.

In the morning, Jim was getting ready to leave for work. Everyone else (including me) was still in bed. I told Jim that I thought Georgie might have gotten a mouse and could he look for it, because I didn’t want Indigo to find it. He came back a little later, and pronounced, “You and me and Georgie got a mouse!” Then he told me this story:

“I went out to look for a dead mouse, and couldn’t find one anywhere. Georgie kept running back and forth to a shoe that was in the living room. I finally thought, hmmmmmm….. So I went to the shoe, picked it up and shook it. A mouse head popped up!”

Me: “ALIVE????!!!”

“Yep, so I quickly popped my hand over the shoe, and…”

I’ll leave out his detailed description of how he disposed of it, for any of you who are fond of mice.

When the children woke up, I related the story to them. Turns out it was Emery’s shoe. I told Emery the mouse had spent all night in his shoe and had probably peed or pooped in it. Emery immediately sniffed the shoe, and pronounced it smelled like… his foot!

The moral of the story – put your shoes on the shoe shelf where they belong and you won’t have to worry about mouse poop in your shoe.