A Better Mouse Trap...NOT!

As I came and went through the entryway today, I kept smelling something. An all-too-familiar smell, one that always triggers exasperated sighs, eye rolling and riffling through dark corners. The smell of a dead mouse.

Somewhere. But where? The dogs aren't telling.

Every time I passed I tried to locate the source. It got stronger as the day progressed, but I couldn't see anything anywhere.

Tonight, I finally located it. The mouse had crawled under the unzipped lid of the soft-side lunch box that has stood empty on the shelf by the door, waiting for me to go back to work next week. In was easy...it crawled up some of the things nearby and had a nice porch to stand on while pushing under the lid. Once inside, it could only reach the top by jumping, and couldn't jump high enough to force the lid open AND jump out at the same time. So, it died.

Sigh. I really liked that lunch box. But I didn't waste any time or sentiment in consigning it to the trash!

One of those "what next?" moments.

Well, next was going out to milk the sheep.

Oneof the hazards of milking from the rear (which I do with most my sheep, becaue I can set the bowl where it's not guaranteed to be stepped on) is that they sometimes poop or pee while I'm trying to milk. Sometimes I see the warning signs and move aside in time. Sometimes I don't.

That's why I milk wearing my full Goretex rainsuit. (Well, that and the fact that Mabel's left teat is aimed very low, so I have to compensate by using a very high aim. Then I move on to milk Tory next, and her naturally high-aiming left teat--coupled with my just-established tendency to aim high--projects her first copious stream over the bowl and intersects with me about belly height.

Lately the sheep's poop has been rather soft, since they've been getting a lot of wet green feed (clover and grass, both very lush and full of water). This makes them a bit slimy to kneel on, and I frequently bless the inventor of Goretex.

Evidently certain plants create a flatulent condition in sheep. And the plants in the front sheep pen, where I've had them grazing recently, are a bit drier than their usual pasture, so the sheep had pelleted poops today. At first I thought this was a good thing....

The combination of flatulence and pelleted poop meant that every now and then, suddenly and at random, a sheep would PROJECT a poop pellet at me. At about face level.

M, you do not ever have to do this!