Field(mouse) artillery
Tonight I am working late, trying to get the mess in the shipping area and my office straightened out. I am cursed with being literate, so that means there are a LOT of books here, there and everywhere. (and of course, the obligatory boxes and boxes of National Geographics)
My #1 mission was to clear my stuff off of the long packing table. Poor Johanna has to deal with my stuff in her way because the packing table is the ideal place for me to sort stuff I unpack from boxes stored in the garage. It is long and flat, an gives me lots of space to create small piles of "stuff" as I sort out a box. The problem with this is that I always get called away or otherwise interrupted from my task and the piles get left there. I managed to clear away most of it tonight, which means creating new boxes of sorted stuff. Since I am kind of in a hurry (trying to get as much done as I can before everybody gets in tomorrow and has to go back to work) I just created a new box labeled "mixed books" that can be sorted out later when the bookshelves in the living room get built. Now...where to put the newly packed boxes of "mixed books" until then...
I spied a spot in the corner of my office that would be just the right place to stack a couple of boxes of books. Of course, it's not like the corner is unoccupied, it is the place where an assortment of WW1 and WW2 empty and trainer artillery shells happen to live. No problem: I'll just move them to the top of a cabinet where they can be seen better anyway. Since nothing in my life is simple, first I need to clear the stuff off of the cabinet top.
On top of the cabinet is: a colored pencil portrait of my Mom as a little girl done on parachute silk by a GI penpal during WW2, a CD helmet, a medium sized cardboard box that turned out to contain some cans of powder (some Goex, some British stuff), a few assorted pewter mugs, and a bag of patch knives I forgot I had, a left-handed percussion lock, and a piece of French soldier bread from Louisbourg 1995 (if I soaked it in broth, it would still be edible).
So I cleared away the stuff on top of the cabinet, stowing the powder where it belongs. I'll have to remember to show the bread to Wendy in the morning, she will be horrified. Jeff will get a kick out if it though.
As I moved the shells from the corner to their new home on top of the cabinet, I dusted them off and as I moved a 1915 dated German shell, I heard a rattle sound. This came as a surprise, since there shouldn't be anything rattling around inside an empty shell. I tipped it so light went inside and saw the source of the noise. It was a little mummified mouse. Well, I guess it is just a regular sized mouse, but he looked tiny compared to the monsterous big rat I got in my trap out under the rabbit shed, but that is a topic for another post. The poor little dude must have hopped or fell in, possibly pursued by a cat or two, and wasn't able to get back out.
Either that, or it has been there for the past 90 years as a part of some secret German terror weapon during the Great War. I can see it now: the Huns must have tried to lob small, petrified rodents in at the Doughboys to surprise them, and when the Yanks and Brits reacted with bafflement and confusion to the mummified mice pinging off of their helmets, it would create enough of a distraction for the German snipers to pick them off. A clever ruse. It must not have worked, as history shows that we won the war. Maybe we had bigger rodents to launch at them?
I guess I need some sleep, as the previous paragraph is just cracking me up.
The packing table is clear, the rest of this project will have to wait until morning.
My #1 mission was to clear my stuff off of the long packing table. Poor Johanna has to deal with my stuff in her way because the packing table is the ideal place for me to sort stuff I unpack from boxes stored in the garage. It is long and flat, an gives me lots of space to create small piles of "stuff" as I sort out a box. The problem with this is that I always get called away or otherwise interrupted from my task and the piles get left there. I managed to clear away most of it tonight, which means creating new boxes of sorted stuff. Since I am kind of in a hurry (trying to get as much done as I can before everybody gets in tomorrow and has to go back to work) I just created a new box labeled "mixed books" that can be sorted out later when the bookshelves in the living room get built. Now...where to put the newly packed boxes of "mixed books" until then...
I spied a spot in the corner of my office that would be just the right place to stack a couple of boxes of books. Of course, it's not like the corner is unoccupied, it is the place where an assortment of WW1 and WW2 empty and trainer artillery shells happen to live. No problem: I'll just move them to the top of a cabinet where they can be seen better anyway. Since nothing in my life is simple, first I need to clear the stuff off of the cabinet top.
On top of the cabinet is: a colored pencil portrait of my Mom as a little girl done on parachute silk by a GI penpal during WW2, a CD helmet, a medium sized cardboard box that turned out to contain some cans of powder (some Goex, some British stuff), a few assorted pewter mugs, and a bag of patch knives I forgot I had, a left-handed percussion lock, and a piece of French soldier bread from Louisbourg 1995 (if I soaked it in broth, it would still be edible).
So I cleared away the stuff on top of the cabinet, stowing the powder where it belongs. I'll have to remember to show the bread to Wendy in the morning, she will be horrified. Jeff will get a kick out if it though.
As I moved the shells from the corner to their new home on top of the cabinet, I dusted them off and as I moved a 1915 dated German shell, I heard a rattle sound. This came as a surprise, since there shouldn't be anything rattling around inside an empty shell. I tipped it so light went inside and saw the source of the noise. It was a little mummified mouse. Well, I guess it is just a regular sized mouse, but he looked tiny compared to the monsterous big rat I got in my trap out under the rabbit shed, but that is a topic for another post. The poor little dude must have hopped or fell in, possibly pursued by a cat or two, and wasn't able to get back out.
Either that, or it has been there for the past 90 years as a part of some secret German terror weapon during the Great War. I can see it now: the Huns must have tried to lob small, petrified rodents in at the Doughboys to surprise them, and when the Yanks and Brits reacted with bafflement and confusion to the mummified mice pinging off of their helmets, it would create enough of a distraction for the German snipers to pick them off. A clever ruse. It must not have worked, as history shows that we won the war. Maybe we had bigger rodents to launch at them?
I guess I need some sleep, as the previous paragraph is just cracking me up.
The packing table is clear, the rest of this project will have to wait until morning.
posted by MVTCoPete | 11:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home