Christmas Memory

We live out in the country - way out. Hay fields, small farms of tomatoes, cabbage, corn and cattle - rural America. So in the winter, when it gets cold out, many of the "little critters" start looking for a place to keep warm. Mice are small enough to find the "cracks" - I know you know what I'm talking about. Once Christmas, about a year after we moved into this house, we had the Christmas tree in what has become its traditional place in this house, the corner of the dining room toward the kitchen. A few days before Christmas, we started smelling what was unmistakeably the odor of a dead mouse. Each day it got stronger. The only thing we could surmise could be the cause was that a mouse had died in the wall beside the tree. But I could not imagine how the odor could be "that strong" through the wall. One evening, I decided that the source of the "perfume" had to be closer than the interior of the plaster wall. As I got down under the tree, the stench became much stronger. I started moving presents around when I hit ground zero. A few days earlier my wife had wrapped a present for me, and placed it under the tree. In curiosity, I picked it up to perform the customary "shake" and try to determine what it was. It was a rather heavy box, about the size and shape (and proper weight) to be the pac boots I wanted. After determining that I had gotten my wish, I simply "dropped" the box, probably from about waist height, onto the tree skirt below. Seems that a certain mouse must have been hiding from the commotion above, under the safety of the tree skirt. Perhaps he was either on his way to or on his way from getting a drink in the water of the tree stand. Either way, that heavy box of boots landed right on top of him, and promptly plowed him right into the carpet below! The "ooze" of his little decomposing body had soaked through the tree skirt and into the wrapping paper of my new pac boots! What were the chances of crushing a mouse with a box of pac boots? Well, it's happened once in the history of mankind anyway.