Holy shit! An attack mouse at grandma's house!

The grandma's both worried about me and mostly it was needless.  Life was pretty mundane there in Plevna.  Get up and eat breakfast.  Now you need to know it was pretty well ready the night before.  The egg poacher held 3 eggs.  The water was put in the poacher and the poacher was placed over the pilot light.  The eggs were in a bowl on the table.  The coffee pot was a drip o later and it was filled with water and the coffee grounds put in the basket.  Our plates were on the table with 1/2 of an orange on each one. The jelly was in the middle of the table.  The table was covered with a cloth.  While we slept the waters were staying warm over the pilot lights.  The next morning the poacher and the coffee pot were both pulled forward and the burners turned on.  The eggs were broken and placed in the 3 places for them to poach.

Now I can not remember just how that damn coffee pot worked, but it seems like the water somehow was vaccumed up into the upper chamber and then the burner was turned off and it slowly dripped through the grounds.  Bear in mind that all happened 60 years ago, so I am not real sure that my memory is completely accurate on this little detail.  I do know the toaster was set on the burner and the burner was real low and toasted the bread just right as long as you did not try to dash out to the outhouse while it was toasting.  The whole breakfast was on the table in short order.  We always prayed over our food.  Always!  Both grandmothers told me in no uncertain words that if I did not pray I would most likely choke to death!  I was not going to test that theory since I had what I hoped was a brilliant future ahead of me.  And here I am!

After breakfast was finished I was allowed to put all the dirty dishes in a pan under the sink to wash later.  They did not want me to be late for school because the principal would administer punishment in the form or a whipping with a rubber hose.  I never tested that theory either.  You may not believe this, but I was pretty much a model child and it was all because I did not want to be beat.  I was secure in the knowledge that when I dashed home for lunch great grandmother would have a sandwich ready for me.  That plate also went under the sink.  Now for the evening meal, I do not recall at all what we had.  I am sure we ate something, but I do not know what it was.  So after supper, I pulled the pan out and started washing the dishes.  Then I dried them and put them away and after I laid out the breakfast for the next morning I was free to do whatever I wanted to do.  Bear in mind there was no such thing as television.  The radio was for the market futures and I was not allowed to read anything but the Bible.  I could crochet, but I was still learning the basic chain stitch.

Now one chore I had which I did on Saturday morning was trash.  We did not generate much trash back in those days.  There was a trash thingy over by the door going into the front room.  That was emptied by grandmother into a wooden crate like barrel right outside the kitchen door on the enclosed back porch.  This particular Saturday, I picked it up and headed for the burning barrel which was located a safe distance from the outhouse.  I spotted the outhouse and decided I needed to use that facility at that moment.  So I set the barrel down, availed myself of the comforts and then started to pick up the container and finish my job.  I recoiled in terror because there was a mouse that had crawled up through the trash and was perched on top!  In my world a spider is the scariest creature on earth, but a mouse is a very close second.

What to do?!  My mind was in a quandary.  If I picked up the barrel the mouse might jump on me.  If I screamed, grandma would no doubt jump on me.  She was very old and I surely did not want to get her too excited.  I knew if I could just get the barrel to the burning barrel and tip it over the mouse would fall into the barrel and I would light the trash and my problems would be solved.  So I got a stick and threatened the mouse.  He was defiant! I whacked the side of the barrel and he fell into the trash out of sight.  I grabbed the barrel and made it a few feet closer to the burning barrel, but the mouse reared his head out of the trash.  I immediately dropped the barrel and it fell over.  Horror of all horrors, the damn mouse was now free to eat me or whatever he had planned.  I screamed in terror and grandma appeared on the porch.  That woman surveyed the scene, saw the mouse, stepped forward and whacked it with her cane.  My savior.  She turned and went back into the house leaving me to gather everything up and put it in the burning barrel.  The incident was never mentioned again.  That is how the pioneer women did it.  I like to think I am just a fraction of the woman my great grandmother Helen Gagnbein Miller Hatfield was.

I am still afraid of mice and I have a cat that brings them in and turns them loose.  I hate that damn cat, but she is the only friend I have now days.  I would like to say that since the dogs are no longer here that she has taken mercy on me and has not brought a mouse in for quite some time, but as sure as I say that she will know and go get me one.

I lay in bed at night and think about my grandma's.  If I could go back in time I would do things differently.  I would listen.  I would listen and I would remember.  And I would teach my kids about the stock we come from.  The chickens, the molasses great great grandpa made and the way my great great grandmother Gagnebein nursed the sick, delivered the babies and then came home and whipped out a lemon chiffon cake without even reading a recipe.

I would if I only could.

It is all becoming a blur to me!

It seems it was only yesterday that I was poking in the soil to see signs of life in Mother Earth.  The next day we were in the middle of a stretch of 100 degree days.  This morning I am wondering if I should have unhooked the hoses last night so they would not freeze.  Oh, and some where during the intervening days I recall mowing and cutting weeds and cleaning the goose house and planting seeds and wondering where they went after they came up because the garden was shoulder high in weeds last time I looked.  Spring and Summer are a complete blur. 
I meant to take a vacation and go back to Kansas, but I must have forgotten, because it did not happen.  I meant to go on several hikes, like the Manitou Incline and up Tower Trail in Beulah to get seeds from the Sage plant, but I think it is too cold up there now.  I know it is pretty chilly when I go out in the mornings and I have that dew on my car windows.  Leaves are starting to fall in the yard and spiders are making their way in through the cracks.  Where did the summer go? 
I recall one of those pattern books with the  cute little sayings that can be embroidered in cross stitch.  I actually made several of them and God only knows where they went. I could use them now.  The first one was "When you are over the hill, you pick up speed."  That is the truth if I ever told it.  Seems like some where in the far recesses of my mind I was a kid and the days crept by as slow as molasses on a cold day.  I do not recall summer or winter affecting me as far as the creature comforts of warm and cold.  I do recall walking home from school behind my older brother and sister who broke a trail through the snow.  And I recall sleeping on the floor at school because we could not get through the snow.  It must have been very cold.  I remember those damned itchy wool blankets we slept under.  I recall jumping in the creek or horse tank or a mud puddle when it was summer, so I must have been hot. 
I remember the hayloft and how hot it was up there in the summer.  Sometimes if the hay was just a little damp the pile would start smoldering and the hay would have to be pitched out on the ground to save the barn.  I also remember how warm it was in the winter.  Course I also remember the mice and the cat. There was invariably a litter of kittens which would grow up to eat the baby mice.  Also spiders.  Damned spiders were every where.  Black Widows were the scariest.  We learned early to recognize the web of the Black Widow.  It was shiny and if I touched it with a stick it would crackle.  Sent chills through my bones.  And I could always see the Widow somewhere with her round marble body, shiny black.  Sometimes I could see her dead husband trapped in her web.  She killed him after they bred and that is why she was called a black widow.  There was one that lived behind the door into the chicken house.  Very scary.
(Why does everything always revert back to Nickerson, Kansas and my childhood?)
The other thing I cross stitched was one that said "Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."  That was my mantra for many years until I decided that I had not really lost my mind, just sometimes I let it go on vacation without me!  I have been told that I should write my life story and I gave that a lot of thought, but that will not happen and here is why...
When I set down to start to write my mind wanders off.  I started to write about how fall is in the air and I had beautiful pictures in my mind, but then I started thinking about how the city fathers have now decided to remove those stupid bike lanes down on Fifth Street.  This started me thinking of how I learned to ride a bike in Nickerson, Kansas and that made me remember school there in the big two story brick building. 
I usually call this "digressing", but I guess if the truth be known, it is just the old adage "All roads lead home."  And I take great comfort in that.

The bane of my existence is such a small thing.

As far back as I can remember I have been plagued by the dreaded mouse!  I hate them.  They are small, dirty little creatures that carry germs and poop on the counter. They can go into very tiny places and I read once that if they can get thier nose in a crack they can collapse thier body and slide through.  I do believe that.  My first recollections of mice as actual creatures in my world was when we lived on Strong Street.  I was probably 6 or 7, which is awfully young to be subjected to the rigors of mouse killing, but I was.  Mother opened the vacuum cleaner and there was a nest full of baby mice in there.

I must digress here for a moment to say this, never do I remember ever having carpet in any house we ever lived in and there certainly was no carpet on Strong Street for damn sure, so what that woman was doing with a vacuum cleaner is more than I can fathom.  I think she had it just as a large mouse trap, because that was the only time I ever recall it being in our home and why she opened it is definitely beyond my reasoning capabilities.  Back to the tale.

She handed the bag to me and some other sibling with the instructions to "Take those out on the front sidewalk and mash them with a brick."

I digress once more to interject that not only was the sidewalk in front of the house the front sidewalk, but it was also the only sidewalk any where around the house, or any of the neighbors houses.  For that matter it was the only concrete walkway on Strong Street at all!  It joined a flat concrete slab that was the front of the house that was cracked and falling away from the house, but it was, nonetheless, the front sidewalk.

I remember peering into the bag and seeing the tiny, pink, hairless mice in there.  Thier eyes were not open and they made a sort of squeaking sound.  As sure as there is a God in Heaven and a devil under the deep blue sea, I knew I was not going to mash them on the sidewalk.  I ran back into the house and pleaded with momma to let us keep them because they were so tiny and so cute.  I told her I would feed them and take care of them and they could sleep with me.  Needless to say, I was relieved of mouse mashing duty.

My house has a doggie door in the back door.  That is so the dogs can come and go.  It used to be big enough that I could crawl through  when I locked myself out, but over the years the size of my animals has diminished so that now it is about big enough for a cat.  Icarus has always been an indoor cat with out door habits which means I do not have the litter box to deal with at all.  What I do have to deal with is her eating habits.  Or her lack of eating habits.  I have been told that cats bring mice into the house to reward the owner for thier care and the cats know the owner is not smart enough to catch thier own food.  What ever the reason it seems that sometime during the course of any given day, I will be rewarded with fresh food.  Cat brings it in and bats it around until I notice that my dinner has arrived and then she stands back and waits for me to eat!

Ah, but I am wiser and faster then that damn cat!  I have 2 of those long handled pinchers that are used to pick something up off the floor that I have dropped.  I have become quite adroit at reaching down and snapping up the mouse, taking it to the back yard and flinging it over the fence into the field where it will be safe (broken ribs and all.)  If  I happen to look out my back window and see her coming across the yard with a treat for me, I slide the doggie door in place.  Cats are not very bright are they?

My doggies are getting old and I fear I will not have them too much longer.  I am getting a little older myself so I have decided when these animals are gone, they will not be replaced,  As it is, if I dropped dead tomorrow, they could never adjust to the real world.  But that cat is going to outlive me sure as the sun comes up in the morning.  When the dogs are gone, I think I will eliminate the doggie door and get Icarus a litter box.  Not sure how that will work, but I am getting too damned old to catch mice!

Continued from yesterday.

Here is Icarus looking all innocent.  Such a joy to behold.  But think again!

This is where she was just about 10 minutes ago.  This is the cover over my deck and I do not know how she got up there.  Nor do I know why!  Pretty sure there are no mice on top of that thing.

So just walking around looking for lord only knows what.

Oh, hi there mom!  What are you doing down there.  Come on up and let's try to figure out how to get down.  Oh, you could just trot on out to the garage and bring the ladder and then carry me down.

Enjoy me while you can because I am getting ready to go hide in the sunflowers.

Told you so!

Oh, well, one thing nice is if she is hiding or up on the roof she is not batting vernin around the kitchen.  Don't you wish you had a cat like this?  If you have a cat, it probably IS like this!