The mouse

A large percentage of farm work is repetitious and indeed often downright boring. Even a responsible job like milking is largely routine and done exactly the same way twice a day.
Cows like routine.
Farmers try to give it to them. Driving tractor can be fun when the weather is nice and the scenery fine, but it can also be monotonous. Round and round and up and down hour after hour. I have known folks to fall asleep driving and only wake up when they bumped up against the stones in the hedge row.

Enter the mouse. I never heard of this mouse before tonight, but both of the men, who routinely do the field work, were aware of it. I guess over the past couple of years it has offered them a little entertainment when they were out doing field work. You see, for quite some time it has lived in the dash board of the White 2-105 tractor. There was a gauge dial missing in it leaving a handy hole and sometimes it would peep out at them, clinging by its little claws to the edge. Other times it would come racing down the tractor hood when they were driving and dive below the dash before they could swat it. Some days there would be little mousie foot prints on the hood next to pools of dew where it had been drinking. It wasn't an exactly welcome guest as it once ate a hole in the air cleaner, but they were never quite able to catch up with it.

Then last week we traded in the White. It was time and past time for it to go and the "new" tractor is a huge improvement over it even in its better days. Still they had a grudging affection for the old thing. After all it had been here longer than I have.

Since it was raining and spitting drizzle today the guys went over to Jim McFadden's auction (that is who we traded with) to see it go under the hammer. The crew there had cleaned it up so it looked pretty good too. Imagine Alan's amazement when he glanced over and there was the mouse sitting on the tire. (He actually (believe it or not) looked around for a soda bottle or something to bring it home in......) As he watched it jumped off the tire and ran around the feet of the folks in the crowd, terrified by all the commotion. Then it raced up an unsuspecting farmer's leg, reached his fanny and jumped to the ground again. The man never even noticed it! (And Alan didn't tell him either.)

After a few seconds it vanished under the tractor and wasn't seen again. However, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if sometime next week someone heads out in the field on their new White 2-105 and has a heck of a surprise when a little grey mouse peeks out of the dashboard at them.
Alan was sorry he couldn't catch it. Me, not so much.