Morning adventures....

We were up before dawn this morning... my husband woke up at 5:30 and I must have heard him going down the stairs because I got out of bed right after that.

By the time I got downstairs, he was having coffee and toast. Does anything else smell as good in the morning as one slice of toast? I ate some pineapple and we were just talking in the kitchen. The cats were quiet in the TV room... Gatsby slept outside last night and I guess he didn't notice the kitchen light because he wasn't knocking his paw against the screen door.

All of a sudden, I hear my husband saying "We've got company," and then he starts walking towards the closet that holds the furnace unit. We keep a few sticky-traps on the floor in that space, and every once in a while, a bat or a tiny mouse finds its way inside there (from inside the walls?)-- the sticky traps keep them from getting out of the closet and into the house. (One would hope.)

My husband opened the door and sure enough, there was a little mouse with all four of its feet stuck to the trap. Poor thing, but I'd rather have it stuck on a trap than lost somewhere in the house with my cats trying to chase it down. My husband brought the trap outside, mouse and all, and tossed it into the trash can. He hates those traps-- says they are 'inhumane.' The last time this happened, my husband pried the mouse off of the trap with a screwdriver-- it worked, and the mouse ran away into the field (along with three inches of grass on its feet, I'm sure).

I heard my husband come up the porch steps, then I heard him saying "Oh my god..." I looked out the screen door and there was a dead baby bunny. Gatsby must have hunted it down during the night. My husband picked up the bunny with a plastic bag and into the trash can went the poor little thing. My husband told me a few hours later that half of the bunny had been eaten away. Which explains why Gatsby didn't want his cat food this morning. Heaven only knows what Gatsby eats when he's outside-- he keeps gaining weight, so I guess that's not all cat food in that cat-belly of his.

My husband went back upstairs to his office, saying that maybe he should just go back to sleep and wake up again. Gatsby, who had come inside after the bunny was put into the trash can, wanted to go out again, so I opened the door for him before I went to feed Mickey and Sweet Pea.

Less than an hour later, it was time to let the chickens out of the coop. As soon as I opened the kitchen door, I saw half a snake on the doormat-- the back half. It was a small thin green snake... Gatsby must have caught him and eaten the front half of it, leaving the rest of it as a gift for us. Such a thoughtful cat.

I must be getting used to all of this because instead of calling for my husband to take away the remains of the snake, I just stepped around it on the porch and got the broom. I swept the half-snake off the porch and into the flowerbed.

Within the next hour, my husband went outside to pull up those big thorny weeds that everyone hates so much, and I noticed the neighbor's cow on the road outside the fence. The cow was just standing at the side of the road munching on the tall grass and wildflowers. No big deal, but the cow was heading down the hill towards our fields, which wasn't such a good thing. Just as I told my husband about the cow, our friend J was driving down the hill and going into town. My husband got into J's car and off they went to let the neighbor know his cow had gotten outside his fence.

Within a few minutes, down the hill came that neighbor, armed with a cattle prod and he got the cow back onto his own land. J drove off into town, my husband went back to pulling up weeds, I started the washing machine.

All of the above happened before 8:30 this morning. As I type, it's close to 11:00. I've got clothes in the dryer, and I've got salmon burgers and zucchini casserole prepared to go into the oven because J is having lunch with us at noon today. Gatsby is in the house and sound asleep under the sofa in the TV room and my husband is taking a nap.

The little mouse, by the way, is no longer stuck to the trap and in the trash can. My husband checked on the Internet and found out that nail polish remover will free up whatever is caught on those glue-traps. So before he went to pull up weeds, my husband took the mouse (on the trap) and a bottle of nail polish remover, and drove up the road a good ways from our house. He poured the nail polish remover on a piece of cardboard near the mouse's feet, and was able to get the little mouse free of the glue-trap.

My only hope now is that the little mouse doesn't find its way back to our property, back to whatever teeny-tiny space it had found this morning which enabled it to get into the closet with the furnace and stuck on the glue-traps in the first place.

As we keep saying-- just another day on the ranch.