The night before last, our cat spent the night outside--which isn't supposed to happen, but it did. So yesterday morning we discovered the fruits of her night on the town: a dead mouse right smack in the middle of the front walkway. I saw it as I was rushing out the door and made a mental note to throw it in the underbrush later. When I came back it was gone (I later discovered my friend Ann had been by in my absence and had moved it just under the hedge to get it out of the way). Then Suzanne came home from school with her best friend, and the two of them found it, of course, and decided to give it a proper burial. Put on gloves before you touch it, I said, and they said they would.
So I'm busy, and I hear them running around, and about half an hour later Suzanne grabs me. "Mommy, come look where we buried the mouse!" she says, all excited, and I allow myself to be dragged out the back door into the yard over by the woodpile, where--
(cue Psycho soundtrack here)
--Suzanne, with her friend's help, had buried the mouse up to its neck, leaving its grisly little head--bloody mouth agape, one eye missing--staring back at me like a little furry miniature Freddy Krueger (sorry to mix horror movie metaphors here, but I'm still creeped out and it's all that comes to mind).
I've spent a great deal of my life striving for normalcy, God knows I have, and the results so far have not been promising. And now it looks like I am going to be raising kids who are just as afflicted as I am, because while Suzanne and her friend thought this whole thing was hilarious, especially the part where I screamed, I am quite sure that this is Definitely. Not. Normal.