That horrible and yet ever so tiny rodent was dead in a trap this morning when I woke up, so it looks like I won't have to move just yet. I'm going to have Steve set some more traps just in case, but I'm hopeful that Mr. Mouse just wandered into our tuck-under garage a couple days ago as we were digging out our bikes. Steve wasn't fully clothed when he checked the trap this morning, so he just set it out on the deck. The girls got SUCH a kick out of it! 

E-"Mommy, can we keep it for a pet?" M-"No! It's DEAD!" E-"But can we keep it for a pet, just to look at it?"

A-"Can we use double gloves and put it in a box and take it to Hartley [nature center] to show people?" M-"NO! It will rot.....dead things rot!" A-"But can we just take a picture of it rotting so I can put it in my scrapbook?"

It is now incredibly clear to me that my kids are STARVING for a pet. So today we found a small aquarium at a garage sale and took them to the pet store and bought them a male Beta fish. They named him Cordelia Pearl:) Gotta love a male fish with wispy flowing fins named Cordelia. Then Steve took the older girls to our favorite cemetery pond where we found their other pet, Freddy the frog, a few weeks ago. Not sure if I blogged about that.....I think I tried to upload a video of the dramatic catching of Freddy......but anyway, we had to take Freddy back because he refused to eat anything we gave him and every morning I woke up afraid that he was dead from starvation. So today they came home with another frog (named Freddy), a small turtle, and a crazy looking tadpole that is just starting to grow legs. 

So girls, no, we cannot keep the dead mouse just to look at it and take pictures of it in various stages of decay for our scrapbook. But we CAN have a pet fish named Cordelia Pearl, a frog, a turtle, and a tadpole!