We were Exhausted after our Thanksgiving trip to Ohio, looking forward to sleeping in our own beds!! But at 4 in the morning we heard a scuffling sound behind our bed. We tried to sleep, but it kept going on. Finally I (Fred) pointed out to my wife that in my family’s household, it was my mom that took care of animal pests in the house and mouse traps and all of that stuff.

Mary Kay reflected. “Well in my house it was always my father….”

We giggled like school kids. Expectations. She expected me to take care of it, I had hoped she would rise to the occasion. Finally we decided just to hold each other tightly, and discuss whether a mouse could climb up a bed post.

But the noise continued, so I looked very carefully behind the nightstand. Nothing. I went to get a flashlight, I came back and the noise was on the other side of the bed! But I saw nothing. So, having looked, we turned off the lights, got into bed, and waited. And then the theory. The second noise was because of the trash can being rattled when I went to get a flashlight, and the persistent noise, was in the wall.

We finally decided it was a Chimney Sweep bird, as we had problems before with them. We camped out downstairs for the rest of the night. The next night he returned. So I rose to the challenge, covering the only opening I could think of in the attic, and waited. He still returned early in the morning!

So later that morning I cut a hole in the wall and discovered not a bird, but 3 mice!! One was still alive, and very much afraid — just as I was afraid to touch them, dead or alive. I tried chopsticks, but I needed one hand to hold the light and my free hand wasn’t that good with using two sticks.

Inspiration struck. Aspiration! I wheeled my shop vac upstairs and sucked clean the hole perfectly. Then I set him free in the woods, he seemed very thankful and unhurt, though a trifle blinded by the light.

The mouse was probably much more scared than I was. Ideally I could have coaxed him out of the hole with water and cheese, and gently escorted him outside. But he probably would have been too afraid.

How unlike God I was. God had a problem with people in the Earth that He had made. They were making a mess. He could have just sucked us all up in a gigantic vacuum cleaner and thrown us out. It would have been a lot quieter for Him then. Are we as disgusting to Him as the mice were to me? Nevertheless, his solution was to enter into the disgusting hole, as a man, that would take away our fears, and who would lead us out of the hole we were in, leading us to a new home.

And that is the story of Christmas. We truly hope you have silent nights to help remember that most silent night.