Who really knew how much a mouse could love to run long distances. I had a mouse that loved to run so much, he would crawl in the furnace and spend hours running on the blower wheel. We'll call him Galen. Galen had been doing this the whole summer. Once it started to get a little cooler outside, he noticed that it would be much warmer inside the furnace when he went to run on the blower wheel. He figured it was just his coach (we'll call him Reberto Salanova) implementing a little heat training.
A few days ago Galen was doing his usual couple hours on the blower wheel when he heard a couple clicking sounds. The wheel started going faster and faster and Galen could barely keep up. All the sudden a huge fire spontaneously started right above him. Either coach Reberto Salanova didn't know he was training when he turned the heat up or something was really wrong. Soon the flames where lapping at Galen's tail, the heat became unbearable, and Galen had to get out of there fast. He noticed a small opening between the blower wheel casing and the frame of the furnace. His skinny runners upper body allowed him to start squeezing through but he got stuck half way. His tail was now on fire and the smoke soon asphyxiated our distance running friend.
The fire left just as fast as it had arrived. It wouldn't come back for another few hours. This time the fire burnt off Galen's hair and the blower blew it up through the duct work. The humans in the house started noticing an awful stench and made sure the furnace fire wouldn't start again. Of course coach Reberto Salanova got out of their as fast as he could and started searching neighboring houses for new Olympic hopefuls to train. Poor Galen was left bloody, dead, and rotting stuck near the blower wheel that was once his opportunity for fame and fortune.
I will always remember my long distance running buddy as I scraped his putrid rancid body from the housing and stuffed him in a Ziploc freezer bag, sealing it as quickly as I could preparing him for a proper burial next Tuesday at the county dump.