Destruction, homelessness, despair, all played out in my back yard.
Mice. If only they weren't so problematic. They gnaw, chew, spoil food, cause fires, spread disease and once they've peed on something it stays smelly until the end of time. If only they weren't so cute. They need to be more rat like. Need to have less of the aww factor.
In the book "The History of Myddle" (Richard Gough (b.1635) written 1700-1702, first published in 1834) the writer claims that the old people of his day believed if you put a piece of cheese and some old rags in a box and left it overnight a mouse would spontaneously be created.
Robbie Burns wrote an ode to his "...earth-born companion,/An' fellow mortal!" and lamented his part in "Thy wee bit housie, too in ruin!".
What other rodents have had a bard for the ages write a beloved poem just for them? Non other I think than Burns' "Wee sleeket, cowrin' tim'rous beastie,".
Mice. We set out poison for them, trap them, set cats upon them, hold snakes in higher regard than might otherwise be just because they eat them. Other than a mosquito buzzing in the dark as you try and sleep what other sound than that of a mouse in the wall can keep you awake and pondering the death of another?
This morning I picked up a canvas tarp that previously in the week I had tossed out of the workshop. It lay for days outside the door, still folded, waiting to be used. A gentle spring rain had begun to fall and as I was about to toss it back into the shop a bit of fiberglass insulation fell out of the folds. Then a ball of soft, shredded paper. Then a fat brown mouse.
The mouse tried to scamper back up hill to where it's home had been and I set the tarp down to make that task easier but now panic had set in and retreat was the preferred option. So off he or she, went, waddling rather than scurrying to the safety of the low space under the porch. Never to be seen again I've no doubt unless it turns up one morning on the lawn, stiff and inert, the victim of a killer cat. I'll leave it then where it lay and by mid morn a crow will have swooped down, picked it up and completed the cycle of life and death.
But now I think of the poor thing, huddled against the cold on the bare ground where cats roam and hide from the rain. Scarce hours ago it had warmth, a secure home, a cache of food gathered from beneath the bird feeder, a future firmly ensconced in the middle/upper class of mousedom. Now it's homeless, the day has turned cold and the falling rain chills to the very bone. Where will the bits of insulation and paper be found to build a new home? How long until night falls and it is safe to gather seeds beneath the feeder? And the cats. Once securely locked out of the shop they are now denizens of the same haunts under the porch. How long until death, premature and unwanted, finds my little brown friend?
A last mouse tale.
One winter I had hiked along an unused logging road, had got to my destination, heated a meal in the shelter of a rock face and as the day waned I retraced my steps back to my truck. As I walked I saw ahead in the distance something scurrying along my foot prints in the snow. I stopped and watched this little thing get closer and closer, climbing in and out of the indentations, expecting at any moment for it to see me and veer off into the forest. But it didn't and only stopped at the very toes of my boots. Stopped, stood on it's back legs and looked up at me. A little grey and brown mouse right out of Central Casting, right out of Walt Disney or Pixar Studios. Beady eyes, big ears, hands held over it's chest, whiskers twitching. I spoke to it and then bent over, picked it up in my mittened hand and held it up level to my face. We looked at each other momentarily, I turned, set him down on the path behind me and we both continued on our journeys.
Such attractive little fellows and so nice to have these little interactions with things wild. Having said that however if I ever found them in my house I'd whack then with a broom and toss their battered little bodies outside.
Such is life. Wish it weren't so at times but so it is.
Posted by Albe
