Practical Joke

So. You may have read that one of our hamsters bit the dust the other day. She was vicious and apparently crazy, so I can't say I'm too broken up about it. I was a little concerned about telling Allison. She does have a tender heart and tends to be a tad dramatic (I use the word tad here lightly). Anyway, she was drawing a picture of all of our pets and I felt that I should just come out and tell her that we have one less hamster. She kind of sulked a bit and then snapped out of it just fine. A little while later she was playing with a gray mouse which although is fake looks quite real. She was pretending it was the hamster. Fine. Whatever. When it was time to pick Katie up from track practice Allison brought the gray mouse with us. On the way to the school Allison came up with a plan to FREAK KATIE OUT! "Mom, I'm going to tell Katie that this is the dead hamster!" I started giggling and together we came up with just the right dialogue to get the best effect. Katie got in the car and Allison piped right up. "Katie, did you know the hamster died?" "Yeah," says Katie. "Well, look here it is," says Allison as she held out her hand for Katie to see the "hamster" aka gray mouse. Katie proceeded to SCREAM like a crazy person! It was GREAT! Of course the rest of us were rolling with laughter! I'd say Allison is handling the death of the hamster just fine!