I’ll get back to my story tomorrow…I just had to show you what showed up here on our farm. This little fellow was spotted in our garden last week. Our garden was such a mess (a post for another day!) that although we saw him, we couldn’t catch him. However, yesterday afternoon we were working to clean up the garden and he turned up again. We chased him again till we caught him. I use the “we” word figuratively. I assure you the boys were having a wonderful time chasing him while I watched safely from a distance….like in the yard on the hammock where nothing of my body touched the ground….while I promised the boys that I would never step foot in the garden again. I assure you I have improved….before I came to the farm I believed that the only good snake was a dead one…I may have mentioned this before. I now believe that there are good snakes…as long as they stay out of the yard and garden. A woman has her limits!
This guy is now living in the barn so he can eat all the mice that my boys say we are being overrun with…more about the mice problem below. I think it is a creative ploy to keep a “pet” snake in the barn. Dear readers, I have to go in the barn! Frequently! What’s a mother to do?
Then these three little cuties arrived….look at that boy and tell me if you could have said no.
The calico has a name, Lily. The others are still waiting for theirs. Three kittens, three boys….what are the odds? The boys are busy convincing me that we are struggling with the rat/mouse population and thus we need all these additional kitties. I hope they are good at catching said mice because I can’t afford to feed them all kitten chow!
Speaking of said mice. I don’t have pictures of this next critter. We had a young couple from church to dinner last week. We had a lovely meal and played some board games as we got to know them better. Good food, great conversation and lots of laughter – the perfect evening. (Never believe this until your guests are in their car headed home.)
As they were gathering their things, I let the dog out the door. We stood there chatting and saying good bye when I let the dog back in the door….Jeremy said (way to calmly in my opinion) “She has something in her mouth”. I am thinking great, what embarrassing thing did she drag in…until she dropped the furry gray thing and it RAN UNDER THE CHAIR! RAN UNDER THE CHAIR, PEOPLE! In front of our company….these were city people who long for a country life…at least they did till they came to my farm….not sure how they feel now that they watched our dog “fetch” a fat and furry gray mouse and deliver it to the middle of our living room!
It was great “fun” watching the boys grab gloves and try to catch the mouse. I don’t think it was moving very well – perhaps the result of being in a dogs mouth for a few minutes. They did finally catch it or I would be writing to you from the safety of a lovely hotel room! I would have taken pictures of all of this but I couldn’t reach my camera from the chair I was standing on….do.not.laugh. I do not like mice confined in small spaces…such as…oh…. any type of building. Perhaps a leftover reaction from the ten million times I read “A Mouse in the House” to Elijah or maybe it is because of the time a mouse ran up my leg and was headed for my face….I survived….just barely! Now, I have decided that a chair is the safest place to be when confronted with a mouse in the house.
Perhaps the kittens are a good idea after all.
The Essential Herbalist 
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