Surprise in the Wood Pile

Michaela and Sierra have been given the task of moving all of the wood piles around the house to one location.  It's been a long ongoing project and quite honestly the work is, ummmmmmm ...crappy.

Most of the wood has been sitting for years and it's old and moldy and covered in bugs.  The wood at the bottoms of the piles are being eaten by the earth and growing into the ground.  Good thing we love the girls enough to buy them some nice work gloves!

They had finally started to relocate the very last pile and as the girls started to toss wood into the trailer I noticed a small pink thing that looked like a big bug wiggling around on top of the wood stack.  Considering the size of bugs around here I figured it was just another super gross creepy crawling thing, but as I looked closer I found more of them and then realized they some kind of little animals!  :)  I noticed a mommy mouse and from that figured out they were BABY MICE!!!  Awwwwww!!!!!!

Pretty good crop from above picture!

The mommy mouse was so sweet.  She was obviously concerned about her babies.  I've caught tons of mice in my days ...I know they are crazy fast and want nothing to do with people.  This little mommy mouse sat a few inches away from us and watched as I tried to put the babies we had accidentally scattered, back into their little fluffy nest.  I collected all the babies and put them back into the fluff and for good measure we added more fluff that we had found earlier.  Then we built them a new roof and added some pine needles for insulation ...and then we put a cracker near by as a peace offering to the mommy mouse.

All the kids got to see the babies and of course they all thought they were the cutest things on earth.  I told them we'd check back later and see how they were doing. ...and I'm sure that soon enough my cats will invite them inside to play.  : (

So for now the last remaining wood pile has entered into a "protected status", no work allowed...  That little mouse mommy and I have a mutual understanding as mothers.  We looked into each others eyes and bonded.  I wouldn't dream of hurting her teeny little babies!!