Of Mice and Dogs

There are two things that I am scared of in this world...I mean really, really scared of. They are mice and dogs.

When I lived with my parents while waiting for our Utah house to become available, I was overwhelmed with the mice in their house. While I was sitting at the kitchen table one night, talking on the phone...I looked at the stove and those mice were popping their heads in and out of the stove burners. While I slept at night I could hear them scurrying across the dresser. My dad did his best to try and rid the house of them. His favorite way was those little sticky squares you put on the floor. The mouse is suppose to run over it and get stuck there. His mouth is suppose to get stuck also and he dies by suffocation. In our house, that is not the way it worked. The mouse's belly would get stuck and the mouse would be flailing its arms and legs for days. Finally my dad would take it outside, konk it on the head with a hammer and throw it in the garbage. Yucky! By the way, this is the only kind of mice I do like...



My other fear is of dogs. I do not understand why people let their dogs run around the neighborhood unattended. It is just plain wrong. When I was young I had dogs...a collie named Beauty, a schnauzer named Mandie, and the family had cocker spaniels named Sugar and Honey.



Our dog beauty died of heart worms when I was about eight years old. I got Mandie when I was a young teenager. One day I was out walking her around the block and a big red Irish Setter came barreling towards us. He was barking loudly and I am sure he thought Mandie would make a nice meal. I held Mandie up high above my head and the Irish Setter jumped putting his paws on my shoulders and barking in my face for the little dog. I was screaming so loud that a man came running out of his house and saved us.



Another time I was visiting my relatives in Running Springs, California. We were down by a stream where people went to swim and sunbathe. There was a very large boulder that people were making their way up to so they could lay in the sun. I had just bought a new kelly green swim suit, and was of course a chubby girl, so I was being very careful and slow climbing up the flat angled boulder. Once at the top, I realized I had forgotten my towel at the bottom of the boulder. I began to descend down. Once at the bottom I was caught between the gazes of a Husky and another very large dog. They began to charge towards each other and I zipped up the boulder in no time flat.

There have been many other times I have tried walking or jogging around the neighborhood when dogs are loose and begin chasing me. Dogs just plain scare me.

I always say in my world I will have ladybugs and butterflies...they aren't scary!