Mice and Mothers

Mom has a Charlotte Mason meeting at our local library every month and I usually beg her to go. Most of the time she says no, but this time, surprisingly, the answer was a once-a-year "OK."

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So we got there and set up the tables and chairs. When we finished I went into the library to browse around for a good book till it was time to start. The meeting went well as mom told about her experience at a Charlotte Mason conference in NC. As I was listening I thought I saw something gray fall from the ceiling at the other side of the room I looked up and noticed that a tile of the drop ceiling was out of place, exposing a crack. I thought whatever fell must be my imagination so forgot about it for a while. A few minutes later after my aunt set her baby on the floor to play, one of the women spotted a small mouse on the other side of the room, coincidently right under the crack in the ceiling. Several of the women shrieked and scrambled up onto their chairs, (Mom was among them) my aunt reached for her baby and gallantly volunteered me to catch it. During this time Mom (still on her chair) got a mischievous glint in her eye, she quickly seized her almost full water bottle, screwed the lid on tightly and chucked it over the table straight at the helpless mouse.

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I was not a bit surprised at this, having almost sixteen years of experiencing Mom's mischievous attitude toward animals, like flinging glasses of water at dogs that are dumb enough to chase after our car, or expressing wishes that they would run into a tree and so on. What did surprise me was that Mom's water bottle actually hit the mouse... If only a glancing blow. The mouse unhurt dashed across the floor. Among more exclamations of surprise from the mothers Mom bravely ran to the door to outside and opened it calling to me to chase it out. I did this but the mouse seemed determined to frighten Mom as much as it could and instead of going straight out the door it went around it and ran into Mom who squealed again, hopped over it, and quickly ran in slamming the door behind her. After a few sighs of relief the meeting continued and that was my first experience at Mom's library meeting.