Too much nature

This has been an unbelievable couple of days - days this mom would rather forget... It started yesterday with the discovery of two baby mice trapped in the window well of the basement. One died, and the children ran upstairs screaming as they witnessed the live one eating the dead one! (sorry for those who are squeamish like me - I ended up telling the kids to please refrain from sharing detailed blow-by-blow accounts with me). I was completely disgusted. Since then, we have had hourly updates on the live mouse, fed him cheese through the grate, and wondered if we should just put him out of his misery. To add to the horror of all this is that we have six pastors staying in the basement for the week and this is their view out the window!


This morning, Ryan ran into my room screaming that he discovered a wild bunny outside, and as he chased it, he found a baby turtle in the woods, which has now become our latest, temporary "pet" on the back porch. The turtle is an upgrade from the mouse, in my book. He just sits there and looks cute. We haven't yet, however, captured bugs for him to eat!! Yuck!

Speaking of bugs, we also had our first experience with a deer tick. Hannah found one on her leg and we pulled it out, put it on a napkin, proceeded to drop the napkin, so as I am freaking out that now someone else is going to get Lymes Disease, I grab the vacuum cleaner and tried to quickly suck up the miniscule critter. We put a permanent mark around the spot on Hannah's leg and now we wait to see if she gets a rash, or fever, or any of the other indicator of Lymes. Let's pray she doesn't!

I feel that I cannot neglect to mention also that we have regularly had birds hit our windows (did they think they were going to fly in and say hello??) but until this week, they have all survived the crash. The other day, we had our first casualties, so there have been two dead birds for Danny to dispose of right outside the window of our family room.

Lastly, (and I refuse to post a picture of this one) my sweet little Ryan went out in the woods, holding his umbrella, searching for more baby turtles. While there, he stepped on a snake, and came running in the house looking pale and breathing funny. When it hit him what had just happened, he really broke down and just clung to me. It was so sad, I just prayed for him and assured him that God was sovereign and that God had been with him all along, protecting and caring for him. It is all he has talked about since...

Okay, I do love my new house, and I love the wooded lot, but I did not sign up for so much "WILDLIFE"!!!