Today we brought a mouse into the house! Not on purpose, of course - though I know a lot of you might question that. We may come across as terribly over-the-top nature-friendly, but this was a mistake - we're not THAT weird! It was a total oversight, and error on my part.
We carried a laundry basket filled with yard twigs and pine cones inside, placed it on a large sheet of cardboard, and I began making my usual brown bags of fire starter/kindling for our wood stove season, in our living room. In retrospect, I feel like a twit, because ... seriously ... when I got down past the top layer of twigs, and saw what looked like nest lining and fragments of leaves and pine cones, I didn't think anything of it! I continued filling the bags until Dale saw the material I was handling. He suggested that we might have to look out for mice, because it looked as if we'd disturbed a nest. I scoffed - of course it (or they) wouldn't still be in the basket by the time we got inside! PLUS, there had been NO scuffling or activity at all whilst I was working with it ... we couldn't possibly have brought any inside.
Whilst sitting on the couch after dinner, I thought I saw a movement on the kitchen floor, but staring in that direction for a few minutes afterwards didn't yield any more movement. It must have been a shadow, or my imagination in overdrive after Dale primed me with his suggestion. I went back to my reading. But, no, there it was again - a small grey animal, close to the floor, sniffing around. Aargh! I called Dale to help me deal with it, and he heroically captured it with a nearby towel lying conveniently on the floor. We haven't (yet) seen any more.
What a numbskull I am! Is this what getting old means? Ignoring the information that is out there right in front of your face - in this case, obvious nesting material? Is it that what losing our sharpness means, why so many elderly people get taken in by scammers? Is it that we're losing our ability to discern danger, losing touch with our instincts?
Eek! Scary thoughts ... since it's not the first time we've noticed, in retrospect, that we ignored some signs that were out there ...
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