He's not dead. He just stinks.

Early this morning, I asked Kat to please feed and water the rodents. It's a job she doesn't like to do.

But, hey, since she wanted to keep a couple mice, she has to help. It's only fair.

I thought I'd jump in the shower before it was time to leave for school. It took only 8 seconds in the shower before I heard:

"MOM! COME HERE!"

I initially ignored it. I was washing my hair and trying to relax with the rosemary and mint scent of the shampoo. 

"MOM! HURRY"

I ignored it again. What could be so important?

4 seconds later, I feel a cold draft that could only mean the door to my bathroom was now open.

Rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, I hear again:

"MOM! I think Jeff is DEAD! Hurry! I poked him and he didn't move and he kinda STINKS! HURRY!"

Jeff's not going anywhere. He's a mouse and I'm not rushing my shampoo and conditioner routine.

"Just feed the other mice and the rats and I'll be out in a minute."

"BUT HE'S DEAD!"

I said nothing.

The door to the bathroom slammed shut.

Jeff the mouse is a pain in my ass. He was originally going to be fed to the snake along with his cousin/brother, Edward. But, no...they were too cute to be fed to the snake.

Kat wanted to keep them and I'll admit for the first twelve hours she did an excellent job of keeping them clean and content. Despite many warnings, she wanted to keep the cage in her room.

Jeff escaped from his cage the first night and that threw Kat into a full blown anxiety attack.

I found him later in my scraproom with all the other mice except that he was on the floor. He looked up at me like he was saying, "Yeah, here I am. What are YOU going to do about it?", and then he ran off.

In my attempt to multi-task, I asked Jeff to pose with my white balance cards so I could practice batch editing.

I caught the little brat and put him back in the cage with Edward. That evening, Katrina decided the mice were too loud to be in her room (duh! she had been warned a million times) and I should keep them in the scraproom with my other "collection" of mice.

So, Jeff and Edward ended up with the other mice. I wanted to keep all the boys in one cage but, NO. Jeff wanted to fight with the other boys. He had to go in his own cage. You can tell by the shortness of his tail that the other boys fought back.

One morning as I was checking on the mice, I noticed that Edward was dead. Not only was he dead, but the boys had eaten his head. It was nowhere to be found. No, I didn't take a picture. I was dumbfounded that mice could eat bone.

For the last few months, I've been stuck cleaning an extra cage and feeling guilty because Jeff is by himself. The guilt feeling doesn't last long, though, because I occasionally put him in with the other boys to see if he's willing to kiss and make up.

He's not. He's more than happy to try and kick their asses all at the same time. His tail gets a little shorter and his face a little more red each time.

So, this morning when Kat screamed that Jeff was dead, I'll admit I was slightly relieved.

I finished getting dressed and went into the scraproom to check on the dead mouse.

I opened the cage door and the little guy came right out from underneath his wheel to greet me.

"Where's my Cheerio, bitch?"

He wasn't dead and I will admit I was relieved. I know. I just contradicted myself from a couple sentences above.

I gave him his Cheerio and when I got back from dropping Kat off at school, I cleaned his cage.

He wasn't dead after all. He was just really stinky.