a little background to set the scene
I’m going to start this story about the van, the barn, and the mouse with a little background to set the scene. We have a minivan. It’s parked near the barn. We don’t drive the van very often because we use it to store hay in. It’s the perfect place to store hay. It keeps the hay nice and dry and free from mouse and cat pee. We don’t have a trailer, so when we need to take one of the larger animals to the vet, we take the hay out, load the animal in, and off we go. Did I mention how perfect it is?
Although the van is parked close to the barn, we put flakes of hay in a Rubbermaid container to make it easier to carry the hay from the van into the barn.
the sky is falling
I’ve always been uneasy around mice. Since moving onto our little farm, I’m getting better at being in the same general area as them. But I’m still not comfortable around them. At our other house, a bird was flying over me while carrying a mouse. The bird dropped the mouse and the mouse bounced off the top of my head, landed, and scurried away under the bushes. That was when I pretty much decided that I don’t like mice. Tabby has had a bunch of pet mice over the years, and somehow, I’ve been okay with them. Maybe it’s because they were securely confined in their habitats and couldn’t fall from the sky and bounce off my head.
the van, the barn, and the mouse
Last Wednesday I went out to the barn to do evening feeding and cleaning chores. It was just me doing chores because Doug was at his mom’s house and Tabby was at work.
I filled up the hay container and carried it into the barn by nestling it under my arm and supporting it with my hip. I only used one hand to carry the container so I could use my other hand to open doors and gates. I’ve done this hundreds of times without any drama so I had no reason to think this time would be any different.
this time was different
As I was going through the gate to the goats’ area, right outside of Sandy’s stall, a mouse popped out of the container and hopped around on top of the hay and up and down my arm.
I jumped back and dropped the hay container (with the mouse in it) and spilled the hay everywhere.
the death stare
Then I froze. Sandy saw the mouse and froze. The mouse froze too. I could tell the mouse was looking at me. Sandy and I were looking at the mouse. All three of us knew that was the exact moment we were going to die.
Thankfully, fate had other plans for us. The mouse, Sandy, and I survived the close encounter. As quickly as the mouse appeared, he disappeared. I was sure he ran out the cat door when I found the courage to break eye contact to blink.
Chloe
Chloe must have been watching us because she took advantage of the situation and ran through the open gate. Standing on the spilled hay, she quickly slid her head between the slats in the fence and was trying to eat what was still in Sandy’s dish. She knew exactly how to get to his food, so I have to assume she’s been studying the gate and his stall, just waiting for the perfect opportunity when I was distracted and left the gate open.
Once I regained my composure, I got Chloe back into the goat area, picked up the spilled hay, and reassured Sandy that he was safe from the huge monster with squinty eyes. All this time, the goats and sheep were yelling at me because they were hungry and they could see that I was just standing around doing nothing but letting them be hungry.
peace and tranquility
Knowing the mouse had run away and was long gone, I took a deep breath. Other than the goats and sheep impatiently waiting for their dinner, we had peace and calmness in the barn again.
I went about my chores while talking to everyone about the events that just happened. Even though the goats and sheep didn’t seem to care about the mouse, I promised everyone that they were safe, and they wouldn’t see the scary mouse again.
As I blissfully filled the goats’ hay trough, I was thinking about how, outside of that night’s events, the barn is one of my favorite places on the farm. It’s one of my happy places where I can let all of my stress and worries just fade away. Mid-thought, out of nowhere and without any warning, the mouse jumped out of the flake of hay I had just put in the trough!
Spit it out! Spit it out!
The goats didn’t seem to notice the mouse in their hay trough. They had their food, so they ignored everything going on around them. Their focus was on reaching into the trough and grabbing mouthfuls of hay, trying to get more than the goat standing next to them before the trough was empty again. They didn’t care that I was yelling to them to “Stop eating!” and “Put that hay down!”
Orion put his head into the feeder and pulled out a clump of hay with the mouse standing on top. As I was running to his side of the trough, I was yelling to him to “Spit it out! Spit it out!” He almost ate the mouse right in front of me. That would have been tragic on so many levels. I’m not sure what I would have done if he had eaten it.
I was finally able to scoop up the mouse up in my hands. In. My. Hands. But, since I’m afraid of mice and the little guy in my hands was bouncing around trying to escape being eaten by a goat, I accidentally dropped him. He ran over Aurora’s feet and into Sandy’s stall. Luckily, Sandy was busy eating his dinner and didn’t notice the monster had returned and was coming back for him.
I carefully peeked over the half-wall that separates Sandy’s stall and the goats’ area and didn’t see where the little mouse ran to or where he went from there.
not another chance
I quickly went on to feed the poor starving sheep that had to wait forever for their dinner, and I got out of the barn as quickly as I could. I just had a close encounter with a mouse outside of Sandy’s stall, and then again in the goats’ area. There was only one area left in the barn and I wasn’t going to take any chances of having a mouse pop out of nowhere in the sheep stall.
in the end…
Now we have a mouse running around in the barn and, who knows how many mice running around in the van.
And now we get to figure out another perfect place to store the hay that we’re sure the mice won’t be able to get to.