A Typical Morning In Our House

The title sums it up. My seven year old's one chore is to feed the dog. The dog food is kept in an bin just inside the crawl space. So one morning, here I am here sitting at the computer when I hear a blood curdling scream followed by hysterics. Sid backs out of the crawl space wringing her hands with tears streaming down her face.  I have no idea what has happened and as I rush to her side, she tearfully screams "A rat !  a rat !  there's a rat in there". I grab her and try and determine if she has been bitten, but no the rat just 'jumped at her".

I already suspect the rat is actually our resident mouse, which despite all Rob's efforts to the contrary continues to live (and probably breed). I say Rob's efforts as opposed to ours collectively, because quite honestly I don't think he stands a snowball's chance in hell against the mouse, and it's time to cut our losses and move on. Live and let live is my motto. Anyway, back to the crawl space, I check out the food bin, but don't see anything so I ask Lindsay to finish feeding the dog while I get Sid sorted out. 

The next thing I know there is another almighty scream followed by a few words Lindsay can only have got from me. It would appear, the mouse was still in residence.  Lindsay comes fleeing from the crawlspace and jumps up on the couch, all the while cursing me out. Somehow this has become my fault, as if I spend my spare time dreaming up ways I can assualt my daughter with a mouse. I can quite see where my son gets his drama queen tendencies. 

So I go in to check out the problem. There I am, down on my hands and knees (which is why I get the smallest child to feed the dog in the first place), with my head stuck inside the dog food bin, and then I spot this teeny tiny mouse - no bigger than a chunk of kibble - which is probably why I missed him the first time I looked.  I reach in and grab the poor little fellow, who by this time is probably deaf and absolutely terrified, only he jumps clear out of my hand and burns rubber to the back of the crawl space.

So now I have two daughters in tears, who won't venture back in to the crawl space and a son who is mightily pissed off because he wanted to keep the mouse as a pet - probably to terrorize his sisters I don't doubt. And all this before 7:30 A.M.  You definitely don't need to kick start your morning with caffeine in our house.

I'm sure we were once a normal family.  I don't recall when our slow descent into madness began, but if I had to guess it would be somewhere between the arrival of child # 2 and child #3.