I’m in a fun group of gals who get together once each month for “Mom’s Night Out” and once each month for field trips for our kids. Last Tuesday was the night out for us and we met at the lovely home of one of my friends.

She has a really long table and I was sitting at one end of it beside my friend, Susan. At one point during dinner, both Susan and I got up to go back to the kitchen. She walked off first and then I stood up. I happened to glance down on the floor and saw some food one of us had dropped so I bent over to pick it up to thow away.

Well, I picked it up alright, but it wasn’t food that one of us had dropped. No, ma’am. It was a mouse. A dead mouse. A dead, flat mouse. And he appeared to have cream on him, but I didn’t hang on to him long enough to find out for sure.

Seeing as how there were some 12 ladies at the table or so I managed not to scream, not exactly. Somehow, and to this day I’m not even sure I know how, I managed to bend back down and put Mr. Dead, Flat Mouse with a Possible Dollup of Cream, back on the floor and quietly announce that there was a dead mouse down there.

I then proceeded to the kitchen where I scrubbed my hands for what felt like decades under water as hot as I could make it. I then sat back down at the table (by this point my friend’s husband had been summoned to come escort the unwanted dinner guest OUT of there). I think I managed to sit down for 7 minutes or so before I popped back up to go scrub again. My friend came in and kindly asked if I would care for some bleach. I accepted her offer and proceeded to scrub yet one more time, this time with a chaser of straight bleach.

It seems only fitting, though. I have a dead cat story and now I have a dead mouse one to match it.

Yay for me.