Mice

Darin and Nathan were raking up leaves in the backyard and dumping them into our garbage bin for yard clippings.  The bag was already mostly full from months before so when Darin went to pull the bag out of the garbage can he was totally surprised to hear squeaking.  Oh my goodness it would totally figure that we would find a nest of mice just days before Darin's 12th birthday considering Nathan's Fear Factor Birthday Party six month prior (click here).

 Of course everyone came running to see what the boys were yelling about.

 Nathan was super brave and willing to grab the mice.

Here's three of the mice (we ultimately captured 4 of them) all huddled together and super cute.  How I could I resist the kids pleas to save the little baby mice.  It didn't help that when Darin was pulling out the bag the mother jumped out.  So now the mice were orphaned.  I'm such a sucker.

And so is Ken because I convinced him to reach into the trash can and grab the mice.  Let me just add that he was saving these mice while just the weekend before he had been setting out traps and rat poison in our garage.  Ken really loves us A-L-O-T! Our garage is detached so it often gets mice in the winter as they take shelter from the farmland behind us.

 The kids got up enough courage to touch them, with gloves of course!

 Back Inside.

 The girls were really, really happy about feeding them.

The baby mice grew really big in 3 weeks.  They didn't look like babies anymore and certainly didn't act like it when they ganged up, attacked, and killed one of them.  Yeah, I don't like seeing nature in action in that respect. Needless to say, after that incident Ken took the kids to a field and let the rest of them go.