grandkid pics! And animal stories

Ironically, the day after posting my rodent column I had back to back animal encounters. While I was at work a big orange cat appeared at the door of dispatch, loudly proclaiming it was very unhappy and needed love (and food) NOW. He let me pick him up while we called the humane shelter, but wasn't too thrilled about it and had his claws ready for action when I wouldn't let him down. Still, cat scratch fever is so less scary than spider bite allergies.

Now, at the beginning of his shift one of our deputies hit a deer as he was driving toward the office. My theory is that he felt guilty about the poor thing (even though it got up and ran away), so he adopted the cat and took it home. When he opened his garage door to get a cat carrier, the first thing he saw was a mouse run by him. Looks like Mr. Cat has his work cut out for him.

Cut to last evening. Jillian has come home from college for fall break (yay!) and was sitting on a chair in the living room when a mouse leaped across the room, literally right at her feet, then ran under the chair. There was a squeak -- someone squeaked. I headed for the kitchen for a mouse trap, and as I walked back into the room the mouse walked across the floor again, climbed up onto the sweatshirt Jillian left on the floor, and just stood there in front of her. We quickly concluded it was sick, or insane, or possibly had read my column and was screaming "You killed my father! Prepare to die!"

I'm not proud of what happened next, but ... well ... there was a broom involved.

I wonder if there's a statute of limitations on how often I can write columns about small animals?

Meanwhile, since I've been feeling kind of blah lately, here's the one thing that always cheers me up: Grandkid picspam!!!! (Photo by mom)

( Brayden, Grandpa, and Hunter )