"The mouse"

My mother isn't scared of most things. In fact, I can't really think of anything that frightens that woman. Of course, she's weary of needles, robbers, you know "normal things"; but honestly she is basically the female, 4' 11'' version of Chuck Norris. More scary really.

Our old apartment was terrible. My mother kindly referred to our landlords as "Slum lords" because they were known to "mickey mouse" everything (which I learned later is NOT Disney related). There was always something breaking down, the best was every fricken year in december our hot water broke. Sorry, not every year... there was one year where the upstairs apartment's bathroom pretty much fell into ours. Awesome, right? Anyways, not suprisingly a mouse would sneak its way into our house every now and then.

So we are home one day and Ruby, our old Miniature sheltie, started to get riled up. It didn't take long to notice her issue. A little field mouse, cute as a button was gliding along the shag carpet. My mom and I, as about 99.9% of woman would - shreaked, scrambling for "traps". The best we could do was an empty butter container. My "tough" mom had the empty butter container trembling between her fingertips as she inched around the washer, towards the the living room. There it was, white and brown , maybe the size of a walnut, trembling under our entertainment center. It was staring directly at her, and me... who was peeking around my mother who is about 5 inches shorter than me.

Eventually my mom inched closer and closer to the little bugger, when out of no where like a 1 ton elephant it charged, and we reacted as if it was indeed an elephant. Maybe even worse. I was barely in the room to begin with so I ran quick, out of "harm's way" when I hear it, man down.

My mom (who has had 2 knee replacements by the age of 40 something) had fallen. As I walked torwards her again, I see she is belly down on the floor, arm extended, screaming "HEELLLLLLLPPP MEEEE, MELLLLLL! I FELLLLL!!!!!!" And at that moment, I fell back into reality and burst into tears laughing: It wasn't an elephant, it was a mouse. I hoisted my mom up and grabbed the empty country crock container and caught that sucker.

Sometimes I like to take the scenic route in situations, clearly. It's worth it, because the memories are priceless.