Mouse!

We have a very temporary pet. Orion found a little deer mouse in his wastebasket at work last week, and being too soft-hearted to let him go outside with the weather so cold (it's been below zero the last couple of days) we're keeping him in a Rubbermaid container with holes punched in the lid. It's pretty big, and frankly, by wild mouse standards, he's living like a king. By the time it warms up and we let him go, he'll be so fat that he'll probably waddle a few yards across the snow before a predator snaps him up.

This is provided that we haven't died of hantavirus first, of course. Especially since the mouse has already escaped once, and it took us two days to catch him.

There is a fine line between "soft-hearted" and "dumb". Sometimes we do seem to waver on the borderlines.