DEAD MOUSE IN THE BOWL

    I slept in the morning after Thanksgiving, filled with love and turkey and too stuffed to get up at dawn. So I hit the woods early on Friday afternoon, hunting from the ground on the north side of the cut behind the cemetery. The wind kicked up and even though the temps were mild, as the day progressed I got cold. At 4:30 I headed home never seeing a deer. Could the rut be over?

    As deer hunters know when the rut winds down you are in for long, cold, sits in empty woods. The deer seem to disappear. If you don't have a food source to hunt you may go days without seeing a tail. We've all been there. This morning when the alarm went off I made the same decision to burrow deeper in the covers and sleep in. I know I shouldn't have. That big buck that I've named "Golden Boy," could still be dogging a hot doe in my woods. I should be in the tree every minute of daylight. Shhhhhhhhhhhh.....let me sleep.

  Last night I had some plumbing problems in the shack. After doing my business and flushing the toilet, the water kept running. I shook the handle. No help. It kept running. So I closed the seat lid and fished around in the tank. My house is dark. I couldn't find a flashlight to identify the issue. Finally I touched something that stopped the water gushing in. Between the dark room and my bum eye I have no idea what I touched. Now I usually leave the seat up for Cheeky. He likes drinking out of the bowl better than the nice clean dish of water I leave for him in the kitchen. But last night after my blind plumbing episode I left the seat down.

     This morning I got up, lifted the lid and floating in the bowl face down was a big grey, dead, mouse. What the fuck? The questions are obvious. #1. How did that mouse lift the lid? #2. Could this dead mouse have something to do with my toilet issue last night? #3. HOW COULD A MOUSE DIE IN A TOILET WITH A CLOSED SEAT? Cheeky was asleep in the chair. He looked up innocently and yawned. No help. I have no answers. I'll hunt the afternoon, maybe see nothing, but have plenty of time to ponder this wet, floating corpse in my crapper (a sign?) along with how I could have missed Golden Boy.  I love a good mystery.