Mice Aren't Treats

Drake loves all animals. He thinks spiders are interesting, ducks are cute, and fish are cool. Obviously, I am lumping anything that isn't human into the animal category. I know that is not the proper classification, but moms are allowed to make up their own classifications because I said so.

As a child, Drake was usually holding a cricket or a moth or something else he had found to play with. At first I told him, "Put that down right now because it is dirty and GROSS!" But, since he never stopped and since I had four small children and since I was exhausted and since it kept him interested in something besides biting his brother in the back (Josiah still has the scar), I relented and let the child play with the grosser things in life.

Then, one day, he ran to me with his teary cheeks bouncing, and told me, "A mouse bit me!!"
"How did you get bitten by a mouse?" I asked as I examined his red and swollen thumb.
"I was holding it, and it bit me," he cried.
"How did you get the mouse?"
"It was on the ground, and I saw it, and I caught it." I've seen mice. They are fast.
"Didn't the mouse run away from you when you tried to catch it?"
"It was running, and I was faster."
"So the mouse was running away from you, and you chased it down and were able to catch it?" I asked skeptically looking at his chubby little legs.
"Well, it was running and jumping, and I was faster than that," he nodded.

When I was in high school I was working as a nanny at a youth camp and saw a mouse in my cabin. I called the director of the camp, who was my uncle, and screamed into the phone, "WOTHLS TYHA OXZY-QE!!!!" He somehow correctly translated that to mean, "THERE IS A MOUSE NEAR ME!!!!," and he burst into the cabin moments later with a broom. I stood screaming on a table as he chased the mouse around attempting to beat it with a broom. He successfully smashed a plastic chair and overturned my suitcase, but the mouse was never found. So, I know from experience that mice are terrifying and will haunt your nightmares for years. And they are fast.

So, I admit that I had a hard time believing that a small child with legs covered with fat folds could actually move fast enough to catch a mouse. But a small voice in the back of my head said to believe this small boy. With my own eyes, I had seen him do stranger things.

"Well," I tried to reassure him, "the mouse was probably scared when you picked it up, so it bit you out of fear."
"No, it wasn't scared when I picked it up. It was scared when I tried to feed it to the cat."

If I have to pick a side to sympathize with, in this case, I think I'm picking the mouse.


My good friend, Adam Smith, happens to be a creative genius and was at the camp we were at when this whole thing happened. When he heard the story, the artist in him came alive, and he put the event on film. Now we have proof that I am not making this stuff up. Thanks Adam!!

Also, when I see chubby cheeked Drakey-Brakey of yesteryear in this video, I want to reach into the video and pull him out and scream at him to NEVER GET A DAY OLDER, but that is mainly just me.