Hello we're back . . .and we're taking calls. . . .

Greetings all 5 people who read my post on a daily basis. Or, not so daily, as of late. Again, many apologies for the lapse - but I'm ready to hop back on the horse again so to speak, and here we go:

So. What story to regale you with since last we read? What tale of hilarity; vacation, work, or marriage-related should I tell this day? Let's start with vacation. Which Greg and I took the last week of August.

Off we scampered to a sacred site where my family and I have been camping for the last 22 years. It's in Colorado, and it's amazingly beautiful. A nice rustic campsite by a river, plenty of wood for fires, and due to the stark lack of any sort of civilization . . .very free of those pesky class A, B, C or whatever motorhomes that are the size of small Soviet countries, crowded with all sorts of prissy folk.

Greg and I were able to borrow his parent's pop-up camper which isn't even close to the same thing. (So stop thinking that)

My parents joined us 3 days into it, and as they just sold the 1974 Vaquero camping trailer that we've had since I was 6. . . .they were tent camping it for the first time in many, many moons. Which was interesting because they brought a huge blow-up bed, an outdoor kitchen, a small outhouse-shaped tent that was for showers, carpet for the inside of their 3 bedroom tent, as well as their 2 dogs and cat, Simba.

Yes, I typed that correctly - there was carpet . . .and (entirely unrelated). . .their cat.

It was like when they showed up - so did bits and pieces of a house.

But, we had a great time. We had all kinds of crazy food which we ate with gusto, and for those of you who know Greg, also know that this relates very closely to his version of heaven.

Until the 5th night. I vaguely remember through a sleepy haze that I heard rustling through the cabinets. Perhaps the faint hint of paper rustling, and the pitter-patter of tiny paws.

I didn't think much of it until the next morning when I found that a mouse had taken a wee bite out of nearly every kind of food we had brought. Greg went ballistic. It is a very deep form of violation for him to have his food ruined by any sort of creature, let alone a tiny mouse who didn't even bother to finish his first feast before starting on another.

We went back and forth on solutions to the matter - during the day the mouse was gone, and Greg wanted to capitalize on that to move all perishable food into the truck, lamenting all the while at our massive oversight in not stocking the camper with mousetraps. There was no convincing him otherwise, and as he was doing that I was trying to think of a way to solve this issue so I could have a functioning kitchen back. Then, Simba (the cat) showed up from his foraging in the forest, and he gave me an idea. . . .

I let Greg empty out the trailer (with the spirit of a man who knows that all his Skippy Peanut Butter Bars will be gone forever if he doesn't act NOW) and when it was done I carefully sprinkled some Lucky Charms near what I believed to be the mouse entrance was. We opened all the cupboards, and waited for night to fall.

When it was dark, we took Simba, and stuck him in the trailer while Greg, my parents and I all sat around the campfire making s'mores. In truth, I thought it would take until the middle of the night or something before a first kill could be made, and we occasionally looked in to see how the cat was doing.

He was perched, oh-so-quietly on top of the seat cushion, looking down into the baited cabinet. Ears pricked, head cocked, and very, very, still. He knew what was up and was taking his job very seriously.

In the middle of a s'mores conversation, there was a big THUMP, and a brief rustling, and then silence. The fire ring was silent as we looked at each other in disbelief, and I finally said what we all were thinking:

"Do you really think he's caught one already?"

There was only one way to find out. We all trudged over to the camper, and upon opening the door, there was Simba waiting for us, sitting in the entryway with a dead mouse clamped firmly between his jaws.

We disposed of the poor creature, and then sent Simba back in to kill any other 'poor creatures' who may be trying to eat our food.

I did feel bad, but that was the only mouse apparently, because Simba caught no other ones that night despite my bait.

Perhaps those lucky charms aren't so 'Magically Delicious'.

At least for field mice.