Opened eyes, the zoo and the Bella story you have been waiting for!

Today we went to the zoo with my friend and her little boy and my seester and her kidlings. We had tons of fun with Jenn and Rowan. Cody kept his eyes open for most of the pictures, too. He's a keeper! He is finally seeing the animals, too. It is so sweet and cute.

Monkey village, where a head is growing out of Cody's back...

I love posing for pictures at these spots in the zoo.

We all know Drew is a cute kid, and it is moments like these that I love.

On a nice lion.
There are 2 pictures on the camera I can not get to upload for some reason. They are Rowan and Cody in the turtle shell. Ah, well. I got my zoo membership, though. I am excited about that. I need to go like 10 times to make it worth it, I think. But I can bring a friend each time, too.

On to Bella:
So last Monday night I am trying to sleep. I went to bed later than I like to. I am going to stop here and add some quick back ground facts that might be useful for the story. 1. Bella, the skilled cat that she is, can open cupboards. She is very good at this. 2. A few months ago I discovered nibble marks in wrappers of Fiber One bars I had in a drawer. I immediately recognized those little holes as rodent nibble mark. (Flashbacks to RatGate 2004, you know what I am talking about Sheron.) There were other signs, too. Like Bella eating her food twice as fast as normal and her whole obsession with the kitchen cupboards. Any ways. I had the apartment complex come in and they added sticky rat/mouse traps under the sink in the kitchen and bathroom. 3. No real sign of a rodent since then, unless you count Bella opening the kitchen cupboards and sniffing at the Tupperware. Ok, back to the story.

So I am in bed at like 2 am. I wake up and check on Cody. See the kitchen cupboard is open, so I close it and go back to my bed. Just as I am drifting back to sleep I hear Bella making a ruckus opening the cupboard under the sink. I am like geeze Bella give it a rest, I need sleep. I try to ignore it. Then suddenly it sounds like she is knocking over the trash and getting in it. This is not like her. She doesn't usually dump the trash. So I get up and go turn on the light and find she in fact has not knocked the trash over at all. She isn't even at the cupboard any more. She looks up at me. She had pulled the sticky trap out of the cupboard (with out knocking the trash can over) and dragged it to the blockade I had up for Cody to not get in the kitchen. There on one corner of the trap was a grocery bag on the corner closest to that was a little mouse. Sad little mouse. The lil guy had been torturing Bella for months and she finally caught him on this trap. I am happy she got him, sad he had to die. Happy she wasn't stuck to the dang trap, too. Sad there might be more, because who really knows? Maybe that fellow had a friend. Happy Bella didn't try to eat him. Sad it might have been Bella's friend and now it is a goner.

Moment of silence for the little guy. Ahhh.