Of Mice and Boys

Over the weekend we did some yardwork, and pulled out the gas grill since it seems like maybe (maybe?) the snow has finally stopped. When Mark opened up the grill, he discovered that eight deer mice had decided to make it home, using the grass-clipping bag from the lawn mower to build their very comfy nest. Surprisingly, they didn't all jump out when he opened up the grill, so I was able to get a picture of one about 20 minutes after he was first discovered. Ethan thought it was pretty cool, although he also made a point of telling us that he didn't like mice. Even so, we don't want to poison the mice because Oscar the owl keeps his home in our back yard, so I'm not sure how we're going to handle these little intruders.

Meanwhile, Ethan was being very helpful in the yard. Here is a picture of him making a silly face -- I think he's pretending to cry or something. (Ethan loves making silly faces!) You might also be able to see in the background some of our snowdrop flowers. Amazingly (and perhaps why they have their name), the little flowers managed to survive a dumping of 2 feet of snow (at least the ones beside the driveway where all the snow was shoveled on top of them) and still look perky.