Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always tickles. ~ Nora Roberts, From the Heart

Pet white mice!  “They’re so cute,” we’d say to our parents. “We want one to play with.” My sister and I nagged at our parents to let us have a domesticated mouse until finally they gave in. Did anyone else have one or more of those creatures as a kid?

Ohhh- now, that pet brings back memories to yours truly and her sister. We kept our mouse in a glass aquarium with a screen over it for a cover so it wouldn’t escape. However intruders were more the problem. More than once we were awoken in the middle of the night by loud squealing. A wild mouse that came from somewhere within our house had found it’s way into the cage. When we turned on the bedroom light to investigate all the noise, we caught the mice in action mating. You’ve never seen two little, screaming naive twins scamper into their parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night so quickly! We jumped on mom and dad’s bed with wide-eyes to apprise our parents of the situation!

Three weeks later, an unexpected development! We learned more about the facts of life, when we awoke to little, translucent pink  bodies squirming in the clear glass cage.

Who knows where the newborn babies went when they disappeared the next day. As a young child, I figured the cat clock hanging on the wall in our bedroom, that I mentioned in yesterday’s blog,  had come alive and eaten them up. After this happened twice, my parents sent the pet white mouse packing!

Would your parents have let you have a white mouse for a pet? I grew up in a bit of a crazy house. Domesticated white mice were only the start of the many animals that could be found inside and out on our family’s property – more about our zoo in my memoir.  Add a wonderful character named Fanny into the mix of the menagerie, and life was lived differently than many of our neighbors.

Oh….I can only image the stories my parents could tell about the histrionics of life with two twins.

This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, the author of Gift of a Lifetime:Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.