Say Hello To My Little Stalker

You never know what the day is going to bring to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Sometimes it's a 50-cent used coffee cup from Goodwill, gift of Farmer H. Sometimes it's a road penis, spray-painted down by the mailboxes. Sometimes it's a shiny penny, winking up from the blacktop parking lot of the gas station chicken store.

Friday, I had another first. It was at the Casey's across from my mom's old bank, the one where I get gas. The Casey's, that is. I don't get gas from the bank. They couldn't even give my mom the correct amount of money back when she deposited her check. If those people were in charge of gas, that bank would have blown sky-high ages ago.

I had stopped to get two scratch-off tickets to tuck into Genius's weekly letter. As I came back out and walked to the side of the building where I had parked, I got that weird feeling like something was amiss. Like I was about to step on something, or lose my balance. I glanced down, just a few steps from T-Hoe's door, and saw that I was not alone on the sidewalk.

Well! That was quite a start, right there alongside the propane tanks. Thank the Gummi Mary those bank people aren't in charge of them! I think I might have jumped a couple of feet in the air. A superhuman feat possible only when humans are under duress and get a shot of adrenaline to spur their muscles into fight or flight. That little mousy is lucky that Mrs. HM is not a fightin' woman! I'm sure I shied away like a high-strung thoroughbred from a rattling copperhead. That's just not normal, people, to look down and see a little mouse right beside your foot, NOT SCARED!

It gave me the heebie-jeebies! I kind of did a dog-shiver and stood behind T-Hoe's open door for a minute. Watching. Making sure that thing didn't come after me!

Let the record show that when I was in high school, I had a friend who told us that she woke up in the night to a mouse running up her pajama leg! YIKES! I'd been to her house, and in her room. It's not like she was squatting in an abandoned tenement. It looked like a normal house. And to think that a mouse had been lurking there, just waiting for the right moment to make a move...well...that's the stuff of nightmares. She never was too clear on how she got rid of that mouse, either. I sure didn't want one running up my pants leg there beside the business route, across from the incompetent bank. That might have been a case of people seeing the moon during the day.

I took a picture. Then another, zoomed in. Then I crept toward that little mousy. Yes, Mrs. HM's bravery is astounding. I do it for YOU, people! I do it for YOU! I zoomed in some more. Mousy didn't move a muscle. Oh, he was breathing all right. In fact, he was kind of panting. I could see his sides heaving. It was already 88 degrees at 10 a.m.

Maybe Mousy was sick? Maybe he'd been partaking of food provided to him to make sure he partook no longer of food. I don't know the exterminator schedule for the Casey's chain. They make pizza in that store. Maybe Mousy got ahold of a bad pepperoni. Maybe he had mouse rabies! I didn't want to get too close. What if he jumped at my face like that alien in the movie Alien?

He was a cute little rodent.

I don't know all the branches on the rodent family tree. Surely he wasn't just a scared, escaped gerbil. It was a bit unnerving to see that little critter show no fear.

After my photo opportunity, I got the Not-Heaven out of there!