Mummies

Time to pull out the Christmas decor and light up my world. I keep seeing reference to bringing back "Merry Christmas" as a holiday greeting. I don't know about the rest of you, but I never stopped. Furthermore, I haven't noticed anyone else stopping. I think it may have been one of those politically motivated things someone started up just to have something to stir folks up.

Not really what I was going to write about. My limited space means that putting a tree up inside is not practical. But, though my living quarters may be small, my grounds are not. I have 5 artificial trees I put up every year. I store them outside in the shed that houses the water tanks.

Every year I ask HeWho has long arms and legs to pull them out for me and I take it from there. I am the one to hang the lights and spread Christmas joy through our land. I will admit that I hang the lights because the eaves are low and require nothing more than a kitchen step stool for me to accomplish this. And there is the fact that I prefer to do this task myself. HeWho has been known to grow impatient with me in past times.

So, the day was fairly warm last week when I pulled out all the lights and various ornaments. I decided to get started on things. I went outside and was going about the business of tugging out the limbs of the trees getting them "in shape". The trees are small and I was chatting with HeWho was fiddling around in his truck.

I was holding the tree in one hand and pulling the limbs out with the other. I had the tree at eye level, so when I saw it, it was right there in my face. I almost grabbed it. My hand was automatically heading in that direction, on auto pilot. My mouth was talking while my brain was processing what my eyes were seeing. My hand was still moving, but slower ...... as I squinted in the sunlight to get a better view.

To my credit, I did not scream as I shook the tree vigorously and the mummified mouse fell out! I was speechless as I grabbed the arm of HeWho was not listening to me. Words would not come out, I just sort of made some grunting sounds as I pulled him over to the still rodent on the ground and pointed.

Of course he laughed. It is funny now, but I will be very careful in the future when I am playing with anything that is stored outside in a shed. Too bad I didn't find it when I was putting up Halloween stuff!