The cheese stands alone

This morning, Wyatt the Dog caught and ate a mouse. Before he dined, he brought the mouse inside my house. (All rhymes are unintentional yet still amusing to me.) What had happened was, I fed the dogs, put them in the fenced in backyard, and got on the elliptical to workout (and to mostly watch a Netflix movie that had been sitting at the house for a month that 'Mater was tired of looking at - but OFFICIALLY - I was working out).

As I'm sweating, I look out the window to see a black and white streak tearing through the yard. Five foot fences are nothing for Wyatt but a quick amusement to jump over before going on his morning romp. I jumped off the elliptical, ran outside, called for the dog who ran inside and deposited the mouse on the carpet. I'm faced with a major dilemma at this point. I have to get back on the elliptical in order to keep my stats going (410 calories burned is a number I don't want lost) however, I don't want the  still alive and squeaking mouse on the living room carpet. Off the elliptical I go, run over to the dog who puts the mouse in his mouth and acts like nothing is going on. Mouse? What mouse? So I haul his butt out to the screened-in porch and continue my workout. An hour later, I'm done working out and Blondie is awake and wandering around the house in a pre-breakfast stupor. I fill her in on Wyatt's going on's and she is pretty grossed out. Me too since I had to clean the mouse carcass off of the rug on the porch. She and Boy child take Wyatt outside again and he promptly begins mouse hunting. This is where The Children get shady.

An hour into mouse hunting, Boy Child comes inside, holding his stomach and is soooo hungry and can he please have a piece of cheese. I, being oblivious to this new type of subterfuge, say sure! Does your sister want one too? I cut two large chunks of delicious New York Style Sharp Cheddar Cheese and give it to Boy Child. 3.5 seconds later he's back inside,  no cheese and everyone's *starving*. They need chips. I give him a handful of chips, which he took outside and proceeded to eat all of them except one. Blondie comes inside asking for more chips since I only "gave Boy Child ONE" ! I was unaware that eight-year-olds could do judgment and indignant so well. Bravo. This is when I realize I've been had.

Boy Child comes back inside and I determine that he did, in fact, eat all the chips (which was easy to figure out because he had crumbs all over his mouth). I do like to give The Children the benefit of the doubt so I ask him where the chips went. My question is met with absolute silence. He's getting better at this game. I ask where the cheese went to and Boy Child tells me, in the most put-out voice he can muster, "Well, Wyatt kept eating it all and we were trying to catch a mouse and need chips to put into a pine cone to catch it!"  Apparently, I now need to factor in Feeding the Wildlife when I do my grocery budget because they went through a half a wedge of good cheese and a half a bag of chips before I caught on to the Mouse Trap Plan.