Dead mouse cleaning

You know, if you'd asked me before I took this cat-sitting gig, what my preference in cleaning up dead mice from the living room floor would be, in the lack of any experience I'd have gone with guessing fresh-killed over indefinitely-long-dead in provenance.

Just goes to show you how naïve I was--I now have enough data points to disprove that hypothesis. I had totally underestimated how helpful rigor mortis is in picking up a dead rodent with minimum contact. A freshly-killed, still warm, mouse is floppy and squishy and hard to manage through the layers of plastic, while a mouse in rigor can be easily picked up with two fingers and a wad of plastic, and then simply flipped into the garbage bag.

Bet you won't find THAT tip in Martha Stewart, eh?

And the cat has now earned more scrutiny at the border as a result--he used to be allowed to pass in and out freely, but now I keep the screen door closed. If he wants back in, he's got to show me an empty mouth and paws first. Sorry to be a hard-ass, Cat, but you started it with that streak of dead mice.