It's an official first for us: We have a mouse in the house.

My husband reported seeing what he thought was a little bit of mouse droppings in the basement when he went to get down the Christmas decorations. I'm so glad he mentioned it because I had a mouse sighting last night that would have stopped my heart without a little advance notice.

I was curled up on the couch in our TV room with the dog by my side when I saw something shoot out from under the couch, over to the desk and right into one of the openings in the cold-air exchange at the base of the wall. I creeped over to the wall on my tippiest of tippy-toes to avoid contact with this little creature, but it had already disappeared into wherever that thing leads (which, my husband reports, is the basement).

After that there was about a half-hour of me turning all the lights off in the TV room, sneaking out of the room, waiting a few minutes and then -- bam! -- rushing back in with a quick flip of the light, hoping to catch that little bugger in the act of being in my house uninvited. I was sure this was the way to snag the mouse, although I had no weapon, no bucket or bowl, no box -- nothing to capture or trap it in. 

I'm not exactly sure what I was going to do if I did see it, but that didn't dawn on me at the time.

This morning I informed the kids that a little gray mouse was, in fact, spotted in the house -- in the room where they spend the most time. 

I bet you can guess what came after the mild horror.

"So Mom, if we find this mouse and we catch it, what are we going to do with it?" my son asked.

"If it's still alive, we'll put it outside," I responded, knowing full well this was really just the beginning of the conversation.

A little time passed.

"So Mom," the son tries again, "you said this mouse is very small, right? It's really cold outside and it might not live. Since it's so small and all, maybe we could keep it? Like a pet?"

Then we had to have the talk about why wild animals (even cute little mice) aren't good to keep in your house as pets. Why letting him go is really the right thing to do. And why, no matter how much they'd try to convince me that they would, I wouldn't buy them promising and pinkie-swearing that they would clean the little mouse's cage. 

I'm wise to this game. I mentioned that we have a dog, right?

So now we're all on Mouse Watch at our house, with children reporting that they've seen the mouse running all around the first floor and under the Christmas tree. One swears he heard squeaking.