Just a dead mouse

In our house, animals make up more than half of the occupants. In fact, for every one of us, there are at least two of them. And I am not an animal person. I’m alone in this house in that regard. Everyone else LOVES animals.

You might be thinking we are overrun with cuddly little kittens and dogs, but you’d be wrong. While we do have fluffies – cats and ferrets – we are also home to snakes, a variety of lizards and amphibians. And, of course, these bring with them the necessity for live food.

So tonight, when Steve gets home, Natalie comes down and says, “it smells like poop upstairs.”

As a mom to teens, I’m thinking this is pretty unlikely, until my husband says, “it’s probably just the ferret or the snake.” A reminder to me that we have these critters living down the hall from where I sleep, a reminder I don’t need about a fact I try to forget every day. Anyway, I went upstairs to put away laundry and of course I smelled what I thought was worse than poop. And I said so.

“I think it smells like death. It’s probably just a dead mouse,’ says my lovely spouse.

And, I’m thinking, “how did I get to this place where the smell of a dead mouse is commonplace?” And then I’m thinking, “It could be worse.” It could be alligator poop. But that’s another story and, praise the Lord (!), another house.