Go ahead, call PETA, see if I care!

So this morning started out as a typical morning. I was getting ready for work and E ready for school. P & J were taking the trash cans out to the street and all of the sudden they both came running in yelling "Mom, Pepper (our new cat and the first I've ever owned) caught a mouse and has it in her mouth!" The boys think this is great because this is the first time anything like this has happened. I'm not too freaked out, because I've learned that is what you get when you have 3 boys and we live in a fairly new subdivision where they are still building houses. Meaning the mouse probably came from one of the nearby fields and not my house, which is always a good thing!

I came out and examined the situation, told the kids to leave the cat alone and by no means get near the mouse (which is still alive) and start to head back to the house when P (my almost 9 year old) says..."Um, Mom.....I tried to take the mouse out of Pepper's mouth and I think it scratched me." Lovely! So I take a look at P's finger and there is blood dribbling out of it. The first thing I think of is to wash the heck out of it. So I take P in the house and scrub his finger with soap and water, clean it with some peroxide add some bactine to the mix and bandage it up. Now I have P cleaned up and I start thinking...mouse scratches can't be good, but at least it wasn't a bite. And then I wonder...is P sure it wasn't a bite....
Me: "P, come here please"
P: "Yes mom"
Me: "Are you sure that the mouse scratched you, or did he bite you?"
P: "Actually mom, I think he may have bit me."
Me: "Lovely"
By this time, the babysitter is here and she has more experience with cats. So her and I go to the backyard where Pepper is enjoying his new toy (still alive) and we manage to capture the new toy and put it in a series of plastic bags. The only thing that is going through my mind right now is the possiblity of rabies. I don't know anything about mice, I have no idea if they carry rabies. I do know that rabies boosters for kids are very painful, so in the off chance that mice do carry rabies, I wanted the mouse to be able to test so my child wouldn't have to go through the shots unless absolutely necessary.

In working with a city and dealing with the same issues as a go-between with the residents and our animal control guy, I know that you can only test an animal if you get to it within 4 hours after death. I don't know how long it will take me to get ahold of people, so I take the live mouse in the ziplock baggies (and a plastic container just in case he chewed through the baggies), put it on the front seat of my car and drive to work. On the way I call the animal control guy and leave a message relaying the whole story. I also decide to call the pediatrician's office when I remember it doesn' t open until 8:30 (at the time it was about 7:45). I get to work and bring in my little "package" which everyone thinks is lunch...imagine their surprise when I open it and show them! The majority of my coworkers were completely flabbergasted that I would be so cruel to the mouse and thought I was absolutely ridiculous for even contemplating keeping it to be tested! Oh well, that's why I'm the mom and they are not!

Good news, the animal control guy tells me....while all warm-blooded animals can carry rabies, it is extremely rare for mice, rats, squirrels, bunnies, etc., because they are so small they generally don't survive an attack by a rabid animal. Because of this, the health dept doesn't test these animals.

More good news, after talking to the pediatrician and having him refer to a couple of books (you would think this wouldn't be that rare of an occurance) he says to just continue to clean it and let him know if it turns pink/red, becomes swollen, etc. He did also mention that, even though they did not use the mouse, it was very good that I was able to catch it! I think the nurses also appreciated an interesting story for the day! Leave it to my kids to provide said story, kind of like the time J broke my nose (when he was only 2)!

So I suppose I am not the animal activist my co-workers think I should be. That's life, call PETA, sue me, whatever, at least you can't say I'm not a bad mom. Except for maybe the part about not telling P to play with wild animals!