Uploaded a new story to the Propellor Girl & Other Tales [link] called The Favorite [link] Check it out now and then come back to read the rest of this journal entry. I'd hate to spoil the story.

This is a story with many inspirations. While it's clearly about family relations and some of them all too human it was also inspired by my daughter's pets. She has (or had) two finches, Small beautifully coloured birds that like to live in pairs. However when we came back from holidays although they had been looked after while we were away the female was dead. We weren't sure what happened as we weren't there so we bought another female. They seemed to get on fine but after a couple of months I found her dead at the bottom of the cage... and the male was trying his best to look innocent. I told my daughter that she must have died from old age but I definitely felt we had a serial killer on our hands. I'm afraid he's a bachelor for the rest of his life whether he likes it or not.

But that fails in comparison to the story of her mice. They had babies, as mice do, and we gave two of them away to a friend. They in turn had four babies and the friend was thrilled and wanted to keep them all. however the next day she got up to feed the mice and the babies were gone. She couldn't understand it, the came wasn't that big. She searched through the sawdust and eventually found a spot in the cage with a pile of 16 little feet. Let's just say the mice weren't very hungry that day. My wife was disgusted but she makes the same mistake that my daughter did: they might look cute because they are small or fluffy but they are still savage animals.