Things that go bump in the night and end up dead on the bathroom floor

In the middle of the night last night Cambel entered our bed complaining that something had made noise and scared him. Since I am such an attentive mom, I told him to go back to bed. Kevin laid him back down and we discussed this morning that Cambel had it in his head that it was going to storm in the night and when he woke up, he used that as an excuse to come and converse with us and lay in our bed.

When Cambel got up this morning he informed me that there was a mouse in his room, but that it wasn't real and he would show it to me. Again, my attentive mothering skills took over and I passed it off as an exaggerated story.

Enter dead rodent. In Cambel's hands. In my bathroom.

Obviously I became very attentive, and highly rational.

I yelled at him to drop it, and we ran out of the room and washed our hands vigorously.

And then we stood on the couch and called for help. Cambel's fascination with the rodent turned into full blown terror in response to my very calm reaction.

Kevin couldn't come home, my first neighbor was just as scared as I was, and so I called on Dena, my fearless retired Mennonite hero. She came over immediately and scooped up the little beast, which she informed me was in fact dead, but was not a mouse but a vole.

If you google "vole" you will find that they are like mice with mole heads and they burrow outside and rarely enter homes. But if they do there seems to be no good way to be rid of them. You can also watch a vole/mouse plague on youtube. But given my raw emotions and the circumstances of our morning, I opted out of that visual treat.

Kevin has since come home and searched Cambel's room. I am in the process of washing all his bedding and trying desperately not to think about what my neighbor asked me while disposing of the vole.

"How did this get in your house, and why is it dead?"

Terrifying possibilities are impossible not to consider.