In need of someone to tell me I'm insane please! lol

[Cercy]

Okay so this morning when I woke up I saw a black streak round a corner and pulled out the couch to discover a mouse.

I left to go grocery shopping and came back an hour ish later... brought all the heavy bags in and set them on the kitchen floor. Put everything away. Let the cat in.

About half an hour I discovered a dead (slightly squished looking) mouse, half under the edge of a diaper box I had just emptied. I don't know how it died. The cat has been sleeping in the back of the house for hours, and if she did kill it she did it within 5 minutes of coming into the house then went for a nap, leaving its body there.

So either I crushed with groceries or my foot it because it was sick with something like rabies, and just standing out in the open and didn't notice... or the cat is a silent and quick hunter who also squishes her prey. Or it had rabies and just... died in the kitchen.

I didn't touch it when I removed it from the house- I used the diaper box and some cardboard. But who knows what it touched. I washed my hands bunches. And I have NO idea whether or not my 2 year old touched it while I was busy putting away groceries.

I'm working very very hard to get rid of a fear of Rabies and this just sucks. Help?

[sixpack]

did you know that mice have very short lives?  less than a year in the wild---even in the house a mouse is still a wild mouse.  It could have died from anything.  It didn't have rabies.

[Cercy]

I appreciate the post- but how can you say it didn't with such certainty?

[kaiatbh]

I appreciate the post- but how can you say it didn't with such certainty?

I think it's just that the chances of it dying from rabies are very low. It's true, mice are short-lived and tiny.... it could have died for any reason. My cats have killed many mice over the years, and none of them have contracted rabies. 

[Cercy]

I hate feeling so nutso. 

[sixpack]

I appreciate the post- but how can you say it didn't with such certainty?

what kaiatbh said.

we actually keep rats as pets---of course not the kind that run in the fields.   .  We have voles--kind of like hamster look creatures that live around our deck.  We use live traps and relocate them to a county park.  None have had rabies.  We had a few field mice that we trapped in our house a couple of years ago and did the same thing.  None had rabies.  Rabies is very uncommon in mice and rats.  BATS are the most common carrier of rabies these days.

The thing is mice and many other rodents are prey animals.  IF a mouse was ever bitten by a rabid animal, it would have been eaten straight away or mauled up so badly that it would have died before it could get sick with it.  There has NEVER been a confirmed case of a mouse transmitting rabies in the US.  EVEN IF it had rabies---and I highly, highly doubt it, you would have to been bitten by it to get anything and you were not. 

[Gippos]

I've had mice in every house I've ever lived in.  They are super common in rural areas.  My cats actually toy with the poor things before going in for the kill.  If I can, I just pick them up (yes, by hand) and put them outside so they can live another day. 

I once had a 1995 Saturn that had a family of mice living in the engine compartment.  They chewed through a bunch of my electrical components & the dealership ended up totalling the car with my insurance company. 

My point is... Your car is probably in greater danger than you are at this point.

[benefit]

When we bring our 2 cats to michigan on vacation with us they kill any mice in our cottage within the first day! its so easy for cats to catch and kill mice, dont underestimate the power of cats as hunters! there is like literally no way you have rabies!

[Cercy]

Thanks guys. I guess my big fear was that in my rush to unload the groceries I put something on the dead mouse and then loaded a bunch of germs, or worse, rabies from it's smashed head, into the refrigerator, then got my whole family sick. Cause the fridge keeps germs alive, right? The two hours it can live outside the body gets extended? I wish I'd paid attention to this crap in science class.

I think this all stems down to a certain self hatred and a feeling that I can't do anything right... I just couldn't live with myself if I made everyone sick.

Also when the website was down yesterday I ended up googling, which was just stupid. Because I discovered the mouse we had was not a common house mouse, and probably a deer mouse, which can carry the Hanta virus.