Look what I found . . .

Ick. It started to rain about thirty minutes ago. I ran outside to make sure that Bennett's bike was under our porch roof and grabbed a couple other toys that were strewn. When I came back in - something caught my eye on our stove as I was walking through it to get back to Brian in the living room. I doubled back and was horrified by what I thought was a prank Brian had deftly pulled off in the thirty seconds I was outside.

This is what I saw:

Dark blur above stove in kitchen.

I looked again - and turned on the hood light (so brave!) and yes, that's right. It's a mouse.

I honestly thought it was a cat toy for a minute. I had to look at it again and again to make sure. Then I went to find Brian and ask him if he had put the mouse there to make a joke. You see, on Wednesday morning, I insisted that I smelled something dead in the general vicinity of our kitchen. Sure enough, when I looked down into the space between our fridge and cabinet, I saw a medium sized furry looking blob that could have been a dead mouse. I asked Brian to take a look while I distracted Bennett elsewhere. Turns out - we had a dead avocado pit beside our fridge. He got rid of it, but that didn't explain the smell. However, I didn't smell the dead smell again. Weird.

Flash forward to this evening and of course I thought he'd pulled a prank. He's like that! No. He swears he didn't do it. The mouse must have fallen from the ??? We're still not really sure, but our best guess is that he was dead in the vent line of the stove hood and fell out of it today. He is VERY emaciated, which leads us to believe that he's been dead in that vent for a very long time because since we've lived here we have had lots of food within reach. However, we've seen no droppings nor have we seen evidence of mice in our food supply. I feel bad that this guy was all alone, but feel a bit better that his family isn't hiding out in the vent waiting to come and get me in my sleep tonight.

Front view - see those whiskers?

Brian to the rescue. Ziploc and stick at the ready!