The Resuscitated Rodent

It’s no secret that I wasn’t particularly thrilled about the prospect of getting a puppy. The youngest was potty trained and becoming relatively self-sufficient, the oldest also potty trained and a room dwelling vampire that occasionally made appearances at night when it was time to feed. Our bunny seemed like enough added responsibility.

To say that he has grown on me in the past few years would be overstating the nature of our relationship but he only takes about twenty minutes to decide where to take his morning dump and doesn’t aggravate me all that often. Sometimes when I come home from work he wags his tail a bit and seems happy to see me. His biggest redeeming quality though is a simple one: at least he’s not a cat. As far as I’m concerned cats only serve one purpose, to catch mice. We have need of that service but I have no doubt in my mind that any cat that we ended up with would fail miserably as a hunter.

Lacking a domesticated predator, other measures needed to be taken. We tried those sonic things that never seem to work as well as the box promises they will, some traps that they seemed to have a natural instinct for avoiding and ultimately, strategically placed poison tablets, a last resort that there was simply no way to avoid.

It was a victim of one of these tablets that my daughter came across today, a still form lying in the driveway that I was unable to convince her was sleeping peacefully. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite deceased either, an occasional back leg twitch leading her to believe that were we to simply sneak him into the house without telling mommy a full recovery was still possible. She promised to take full responsibility for his care.

Deciding that this wasn’t an option that would be in either of our best interests to pursue and also hesitant to put the little fellow out of his misery in her presence I realized that there really was only one thing that I could do.

Mouth to mouse resuscitation.

Slightly different from the more commonly known “mouth to mouth” method, this involved me lying down in the driveway several inches away from the offensive creature and blowing towards him as if trying to rekindle a dying ember in the fire pit. It was completely ridiculous, had no chance of success, and I’ll be damned if after a few minutes the little bastard didn’t jump up and run over to a pile of pallets by the shed.

I have no idea if he will make a full recovery, have different feelings than my daughter about whether or not that would even be the desired outcome, but for a few glorious moments today I was a little girl’s hero and I’ll tell you friends, it felt pretty damn good.

I’ll get him next time.

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Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com

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