Sam, the mouse

This is Sam. Here in Miro´s hands. 

Sam comes from the farmer´s store where I buy my longneck-bottles for juicemaking and my big mason jars for pickling cucumbers and my grains for milling my own flour. We´ve been there quite often those last few months. They sell all sorts of things for farmers, but also fodder for various animals - and these mice are being sold as fodder for snakes.

 They cost less than 2 Euro each. 

So as soon as my kids realized what the fate of these mice was... they started nagging.

I am not fond of keeping pets, for various reason, one being I don´t think men should keep living beings in cages just for their private pleasure and as substitutes for human friends. I find that creepy. 

Yet, the prospect of my sweet Miro taking care of one small mouse he rescued from being snake dinner.... the prospect of Ronja checking the internet and making lists like a biologist on a research-spree.... oh, that got me in the end. So after one summer of sighing and "please" every time we went to the farmer´s store... 

 

...we brought Sam the mouse home. Who, by the way, got his name from Frodo´s friend Sam from the LOTR. And who lives alone, though I wanted at least two mice, but the lady in the store said she only sells males and males fight. So he´s doomed to a life in solitude. I still need to decide whether I find that preferable to being snake dinner... or not. 

However. All my kids cleaned their room to be the one who´s hosting Sam´s cage for the first week. Ronja allready picked blackberry leaves and apple tree twigs as healthy snacks and strictly checks that Sam the mouse doesn´t get to much fruit - only twice a week! - and she also hung lists for her sibblings about what they are supposed to feed the mouse and what not. Miro is super thrilled letting him crawl into his sleeves, and even Eva loves having the mouse climbing strands of her long hair. 

Only Mehmet, who is my son through and through, is interested, but not too mouse-crazy... he is more about building a house or a creative playground for the mouse... in a safe distance from it, preferably with lots of acrylic paint.

Other than that... wanna hear from my job? One kid yesterday threw chairs and tables across the room yesterday... and another kid got his small finger smashed in the door of the toilet... which, by the way, is almost always unusable due to overflowing... and we got lengthy instructions by a police-officer about how to prevent crimes, since a strange guy tried to chat two firstgraders into his car this week... and I was so tired yesterday... and then my super awesome collegue, who happens to be Indian, brought his Bollywood music today, and I think we spent about two hours dancing. The girls swung their hips and the boys play pretended being Sharuk Khan, and my colleague had dance moves that made us laugh tears... and even that boy who had thrown chairs just 24 hours ago rocked the house... in a really sweet way this time. Oh, the power of music. I feel like I´m still dancing.