Mice

Because Jamie asked for a farm story!

My mother has this thing with mice. We had lots of them in the grainery, as a kid I would go and find the baby mice there. They were tiny and cute, especially the little pink ones with no hair. I would always take them in to the house because I knew they wanted to see My mother. They would look up and squeak and she would jump, dance and squeak (scream). I’m sure it was her way of communicating with them. This form of communication was too complex for a child to understand. She would quickly send me out the door with the mice. Not sure why she wanted to spend such little time with them.

On one another occasion she got up very early in the morning to go hunting. I think she was hunting neighbor’s dogs. She had been quite successful hunting in the past. Maybe she thought they were going to eat her mice. She clamed they were after her chickens. She was a very good shot. They claim that she could shoot pennies off a picket fence. I kept hoping she would win me a turkey at the annual turkey shoot, but she never competed. I think she was afraid of showing all the men up.

That morning the dogs got away but not before she had loaded a bullet in the gun. She came in the house and as she was walking through the kitchen one of her friendly mice saw her. Wanting to get closer to her the mouse ran up her leg. She got very excited about the mouse running up her leg. She started doing the jump, dance and scream thing. She got so excited with the dance that she lost her wits and pulled the trigger on the gun. Of course the gun went off and the bullet that was meant for a dog, shot a hole in the kitchen floor.

On another occasion I was in the bathroom doing what “regular” people do several times a day. While there one of my mother’s mice friends came up and started looking at me. I thought to myself “little mouse, it’s not me that you wanted to see, it’s my mother”. I didn’t want him to get discouraged and run away, before he had a chance to see my mother, so I carefully placed the toilet plunger over him. I then went and got my mother. I brought my mother in the bathroom. Thinking they would want privacy for their little communication ritual, I closed the door to the bathroom.

After closing the door I removed the toilet plunger from off the mouse. My mother immediately did her jump, dance and scream ritual. She jumped so high that she landed on the rim of the toilet. Little boys are supposed to put the lid up and I had. I was very impressed with my mother, up until this point I never realized that she could do her mouse dance on the rim of a toilet.

Several years later while driving through Utah I stopped at a truck stop for gas. While paying for gas I looked down and they had a box with a slide lid on it. When I slid the lid a fake mouse come out and hit my had. I said to the teller “I have to get this for my mother for Mother’s day”. She said “you wouldn’t”. I don’t think she understood how much my mother likes mice. I gave it to my mother and waited to see if she would do the jump, dance and scream thing with a fake mouse. She did. I went to the back bedroom and within a few minutes heard a knock on the door. It was her visiting teachers. She said “look what my son got me for Mother’s day”. I then head a scream, then someone say “what is it”? Then I heard another scream. I was so glad she was able to share her love for mice with others.

For her 75 birthday party I thought about bringing a mouse so the grandkids could learn how to do the jump, dance and scream thing. But I decided she was probably too old to jump and dance like she used to.