Submitted to www.illustrationfriday.com

Sick Day

The rosy cheeks started last night with feelings of illness following shortly. After a long night our second daughter missed a day of school and slept on the couch all day long.

Now a cough has started and we are hoping that this isn’t a case of strep. It appears that there will be a second day on the couch. I guess that the best part is that her usually wild hair is even more wild tonight.

Stripie’s Stash

“We are going to have baby chicks! Stripie is sitting on 14 eggs!” The two youngest girls are so excited to find that Stripie has been brooding a clutch of small speckled eggs. Who knows if they will hatch, but I sure hope that they do. She is missing from the yard most of the time and so we are hopeful that she is keeping her stash warm and alive.

Spring is here and it was a wonderful relaxing Saturday. The kids played outside most of the day and Brenda and I went for a nice walk this evening. I am sure that we will have more snow but today was great.

Mice can fly

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch …

I tried to ignore it but discovered that ignoring it wouldn’t make the reality of a mouse in the bedroom go away.

The lights went on.

I quietly stalked the scratching creature, but I am not a good hunter when I am only in my underclothing.

The lights went off.

Moments later, the small creature ran across my chest and over my pillow. “Get up!” I yelled to my wife. “There is a mouse in the bed!”

The lights went on.

Now we were both stalking the creature. My wife saw it first running along the wall. I knew that I would be facing the task of disposing of the creature and looked around for something to use. That is when I saw my winter gloves sitting on my shelf by my bed. I put them on and returned to the hunt.

The mouse ran into our closet and with a little coaxing from Brenda, it ran behind a small set of drawers into my gloved hands. Now what? I didn’t want to kill it but I must be a man in front of my wife. “Squish it ?” I thought as the mouse wiggled inside of my gloved palms. “Throw it into the yard!” said Brenda. With great relief at not needing to sacrifice my male ego, we ran down the hall to the front door. She opened the door, I swung my arms, opened my gloved hands and saw with my own eyes that mice can fly. The small furry dark spot flew into the dark night sky and disappeared.

We both stood there disrobed with the front door wide open, but I wasn’t embarrassed because I was wearing gloves.

Benjamin Bunny

He is all white with soft pink eyes but there is nothing “soft” about Benjamin Bunny. Inch long claws have carved scars into the flesh of several family members. I use to laugh at the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but now I know that it was a documentary.