A lovely little present

The boys were playing nicely downstairs yesterday so I took the opportunity to do a bit of cleaning around the house. I went upstairs to tackle the bathrooms. I was just finishing up the mirror in our bathroom when I heard Jameson coming up the stairs saying, "I got sumfing for you mommy". I was on the phone with my sister at the time and I told her that I never liked it when I heard those words come out of his mouth... I met him at the stairs and he said, "Look mommy, I got sumfing for you. Look what I found". And he proudly held up a dead mouse. Yes, that's correct, a dead mouse. He was so proud as he was dangling it by its tail. I gasped and quickly yelled, "Put that down!!!". My sister is now somewhat confused since she could only hear my end of the story. Poor Jameson looked terror stricken. I didn't want to frighten him, I just didn't want him playing with a dead rodent. (ick, my skin is crawling right now.) I quickly tried to make it better and said, "It's OK honey, mommy just doesn't want you to play with that thing. You're OK, you did well. Thank you so much honey." Meanwhile, I'm almost gagging the whole time and practically hyperventilating. I have a fake smile plastered on my face and my voice easily went up an octave or two. He looked at me and smiled then said, "OK mommy". And off he went back to the basement, not knowing how disgusting this whole situation was.
I finally was able to tell my sister what happened. She found the whole thing rather hilarious. In fact, she admitted to tears of laughter.
I went downstairs and asked Jameson where he found the lovely "thing". I didn't want to put a name to it. He pointed to the middle of the floor and said, "Oh, I found the fing right there mommy". "It was just lying there?" "Oh, hehe, it was in my tool box." "In your tool box? Show me." So he took me over to this little tool box/step stool that they have. He said, "Mommy, the grey fing was in here." "Inside?" "Yeah, I'll show you." So he opened the box and showed me where he found it. I reluctantly looked around and saw no other evidence of the mouse. "Great honey, good job. Thanks sweetie." Fake smile, high pitched voice.
Now I had to go upstairs and deal with the mouse that was hastily dropped on my stair. I was a bit scared to look at it but it was obviously dead and stiff. In fact, he was kind of cute. But still, it was a mouse. I grabbed a plastic shopping bag but I really didn't want to feel the mouse. So I wrapped the bag around the mouse and was able to scoop it up without actually touching it. Then I deposited it in another bag for safe keeping, tied it tightly and threw it in the garbage. I'm so glad it's winter and won't rot before garbage day.
So, the moral of the story, whenever I hear the words, "Mommy, I found somefing......". RUN!!!!