Round Table -- Summer morning surprise: A tale of two tails

But it quickly goes away. My ears can only detect the sprinklers and the rustling noise Skilly, our cat, makes as he comes to my pillow for a pat on the head. In a flash, he’s jumping over my body and I hear that loud squeak again. I’m tired and still kind of in denial, so it takes a minute to realize what is actually going on.

Which is: Skilly has brought a live mouse to bed.

When it clicks, I am required to yell a bit as my feet hit the floor, because MOUSE IN THE BED. This wakes up my husband, which is kind of the point.

Eric gets up and turns on the light, and there, snuggled in the folds of our quilt, is a rather adorable brown mouse. Except it’s vermin and it’s in my bed, so my sympathy is limited.

Now that the two of us are up, Skilly has completely lost interest. We point and encourage, but he will not even look at the mouse. Eric resorts to getting the dustpan and broom to scoop the thing up, and I help by opening the screen door and shouting some more while flailing around a bit.

Those are really the only skills I am able to bring to a situation such as this.

Excitement over, we crawl back in to bed and turn off the lights, jumping every single time Skilly decides to attack a non-existent mouse in the folds the new quilt covering us. He’s completely clueless about the disappearance of his mouse, and, given that it is now 2 a.m., his confusion is not as cute as it would be at, say, 8:30.

This isn’t the first time that Skilly has brought a mouse to bed. That incident occurred in June, and the mouse was dead — no squeaks to wake us up, just Skilly’s repeated dropping of the thing on our sleeping forms until we finally got the point.

The scars still linger from this second occurrence; it’s hard not to think the worst when Skilly leaps up on the bed. My hopes are not high that we will not repeat this game in the near future. Mice — and Skilly’s joy in finding and playing with them — are just opportunity cost of living where we do.

It’s a good thing he’s cute …

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Trisha Walker hates mice and isn’t all that fond of spiders, either, but is kind of enchanted with the skunk family that comes around to live under her daughters’ playhouse for a week or two each summer. Because skunks eat mice; she has no idea what their view on spiders might be.

CUTLINE: Skilly enjoying a quiet moment at home.

Photo by Trisha Walker