Cottage For Sale – Part 3

“At first we had a dog.”

“I got her as a puppy from the pound when Billy was a year old. It was a mixed breed but looked a lot like a midget collie with maybe some beagle thrown in. She was a great dog but didn’t like the water much. I think the kids might have thrown her out of the boat one year and after that she didn’t like going out in the boat or being too close to the water. She was a gentle little thing.”

“One year we got the kids some mice for Christmas. Buffy, the dog, was getting older and we thought it would be a good idea to get some other animal for the kids to bond to before Buffy was gone. We got a brown mouse for Billy, a white mouse for Angie and a cute little piebald one for Daniel. They were supposed to all be males and I guess they were because none of them had babies all winter. When we went to the cottage that summer we took them with us in one big cage.”

“They were unusual from the beginning. I guess that should have given me my first clue that they were not normal mice. First, no matter how many times the kids forgot to lock their cage, none of them ever left. I would say ‘got away’ but that was never the right term. Everything they did seemed to be calculated.”

“We were so proud of the kids.”

Continued tomorrow… 8:00 am EST.