Did not need to see that

This morning I woke up wide awake at about 5:30am, and despite my best efforts could not fall back to sleep. Given that the laundry is threatening to overwhelm my room piling up, I decided to be productive and at least start it.

When I brought my basket downstairs and started sorting it, I discovered a sad, lonely little pile that I’d forgotten last time (my splash pants, workout shorts, socks, a hoodie) and designated it the first pile to go in. I’d almost finished throwing it in the washer when I noticed there was something on the floor beside the splash pants, so I turned to take a better look and then shrieked like the girl I am.

It was a mouse. Dead, fortunately, because I don’t know what I would have done if it was alive¹. I finally managed to pull myself together and dispose of it, after having poked it several times with a broom to make good and sure it was dead because yo, those little buggers can JUMP².

I’m not sure what worries me more: that there was a dead mouse in my laundry or that my laundry was toxic enough to kill a living creature³

1. I suspect screaming and jumping about until I either succeeded in scaring the mouse off or hitting my head on any number of low hanging things on the basement ceiling. [↩]
2. There is a story about Bing bringing me a very not-dead mouse in the middle of the night once, and it ran up the curtain on my closet. I tried to knock it down with a broom so Bing could “take care of it” but it jumped at me. From several feet away. And almost landed on me. [↩]
3. Oh, I’m not really surprised there are mice – you can’t live in a house this old at this time of year without having a few, although I’ve seen very little evidence of them. [↩]