While the Husband's Away, the Mice Will Play...

Yesterday was a difficult day, for many reasons. First my husband has been out of town all week on a business trip. I can safely say that now because he'll be home this afternoon. As a result, I've been the total keeper of the farm. Now, this really doesn't make a whole lot of difference as far as the animals are concerned, because I'm the main feeder/water/cleaner of the chickens and ducks as it is, and I've gone out to feed the cattle before as well. But now there's the garden to consider. And then whatever goes wrong is up to me to fix. And things that go "bump" in the night all the sudden get louder and need special attention paid to them. Why are there so many more of those sounds when my husband is gone?

So I was already missing my husband like crazy yesterday, got some hard news in the afternoon, and then went home to find a dead steer in the field. Now, we knew he was feeling under the weather, but my father-in-law was going to come down from the Tulsa area this weekend and help us administer some treatment. It was under control, so we thought. Apparently not. So all the sudden I had a dead steer calf on my hands, 1 1/2 hours left of daylight, and definitely not enough energy or ability to dig a hole to bury it or drag it anywhere. I ended up calling Husband, Father-in-law, and Dad (who lives nearby) to get advice, along with going on a phone hunt for anyone who could take the carcass away. Seriously, why doesn't the yellow pages have a "carcass removal" section in bold and highlighted?!? :) We ended up using my dad's truck to remove the animal to another part of the field and then covered it with a tarp. This got done at about 11 last night.

I have trouble relaxing enough to go to sleep when Husband is gone, so I ended up going into a semi-coma on the couch sometime after midnight. I woke up to move into the bedroom at about 3, and heard a distinct bang/scratch sound that sounded like it came from the side door area outside. This of course freaked me out and sent me running for the firearm I always have available for protection. I am an Okie who believes in Second Amendment rights, by the way. Actually, that's almost redundant. But I digress. I heard the noise again, but it was hard to tell which direction it was coming from. So I did what any girl spending the night alone and hearing a possible intruder would do: I called my mom. I don't know what I thought she could do, but it sure helped to know that someone else was "with" me in this. I turned on all the outside lights and turned off all the inside lights (easier to see out), but saw nothing. Eventually, my nerves settled down and we determined that it was probably just a large junebug or something similar hitting the storm door near the porch light. By this point I had lost an hour or so of precious sleep. So I woke up forty minutes after my alarm this morning (Oops) and went in the kitchen to find...a chewed up part of a banana. I investigated further to find a piece of partially-chewed taffy that had been left on the counter and little poop bits everywhere. Oh, yeah, we have mice in the kitchen. I'm going to WallyWorld today to buy approximately 30 mousetraps. OK, fewer than that, but these rodents are going down!

It does kind of make me grin that I was stealthily looking around the house in the dark last night with a loaded gun all because of a mouse, though. :)