Houdini Mouse

Smoked myself and Four-legged-friend today, courtesy of a very fickle wind plus bonfire.

Here are Four-legged-friend's thoughts. Maybe.

It's time for the annual burning of the rabbit house again. Their tunnels were great this year. Going wide and deep below the pile of sticks, just right for poking my whole head into and sniffing that lovely, rich, rabbity smell. But Mum made the pile of sticks higher and and so rickety that the rabbits probably wouldn't have liked it much anyway and then she set fire to it! She spent ages kicking a big pile of leaves around, before chucking them on the fire, too - they smelt ripe and mouldy and delicious and I ate a few - but Mum didn't find any hedgehogs, or whatever it was she said she was looking for.

But she did find a mouse. And shout at it. She disturbed it and yelled as it ran into the fire. Bit pointless, if you ask me, because I've never met a mouse that understands English.

Of course, the mouse ignored her and ran into the fire anyway. Stupid creatures mice! We waited for the smell of roast mouse. Doggy dinner?  But, proving that it is possible to run over hot coals without burning your feet, the mouse ran out of the other side of the bonfire, a bit sooty round the edges and steaming slightly, and bounded across the grass before disappearing under the hedge. I didn't chase it - after its ordeal, that would have been ungentlemanly.

The wind blew the smoke round and round in circles, round our heads, round our coats/clothes and up our noses. We breathed smoke, coughed smoke, sneezed smoke and stank of smoke. Mum went off to have a shower. I had a much better idea: roll in something - hmm? Long grass, that'll do. Lucky for mum the grass was clean. If it hadn't been, I'd have needed a shower too.

After all that bonfiring, all I wanted was sleep. But it's difficult to sleep when Littlest wants to play with my ears.