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Requiem for a mouse |
| Somewhere it
is written and quite often spoken that life isn't fair. It's
an irrefutable axiom. So many who receive so much are not necessarily
the most worthy and so many who have an abiding nobility often
struggle to make ends meet. There is a poor little creature in this house cowering somewhere in an obscure corner shivering with fear and wondering if its life will ever again be as serene as it was 10 minutes earlier. I was having lunch a few moments ago, sitting at the kitchen table and reading the morning paper. It is the most tranquil part of the day and warmly enhanced by music from KUSC. Suddenly the kitchen door blasts open as if propelled by a fierce wind. Mr. Chips dashes in with what he obviously considers a great trophy clenched between his teeth. "What do you got there?" I shouted as he sped into the bedroom with me in hot pursuit. He dropped it on the floor with a sense of pride as if he were presenting the Kohinoor diamond to his best friend. It was a little mouse bewildered and frightened who frantically scampered helter-skelter in search of an exit and who was blocked at every turn by a cat who had mastered his instinctive goal-tending proclivities. Though I think squirrels are adorable, I am not a devotee of the rodent family. Had this little mouse, who was adorable, been (to borrow a phrase from Jimmy Cagney, "a dirty rat") I would have run out of the house and left cat and mouse to their respective destinies. Instead I pushed Mr. Chips aside and tried to retrieve the tiny creature by hand. He darted under a nightstand. I lifted the table away from the corner and he shot out again, only to be smacked like a hockey puck by Mr. Chips, who sent him sprawling under the bed. I slid the bed on its casters away from the wall. To Mr. Chips' chagrin and my delight the mouse was gone. I had no idea whether he was injured or terrified or both, but I was glad he had disappeared. I pushed the furniture back to its proper setting, closed the door and returned to the kitchen to finish lunch. I tucked Mr. Chips under my arm and set him down on a chair. I recalled a year or so ago when we had a discussion about stalking birds at their feeder. After explaining to him that they were creatures just like he and I, but of different species, and were entitled to live without harassment particularly since he (Mr. Chips) had plenty to eat, he understood it all. He never again stalked or pounced on a bird. I tried the same approach again, substituting mice for birds. But I went to great efforts to explain were he to catch a mouse in the house as opposed to outside, though that would be bad for the mouse, it would be good for us who lived here. I'm not sure he sorted it out, and I returned to my lunch and the morning paper. I later went into my office and started work again. I couldn't help but think of that poor little mouse cowering in momentary safety in the other room. Even if he hadn't been hurt his survival odds were minimal. There are two cats in this house. Though both are endeared to me with an affection that knows no bounds, a cat, as Gertrude Stein would have put it, "is a cat, is a cat" and the same corollary applies to a mouse. Later in the afternoon I returned to the closed bedroom to find the little mouse dead on the floor. Had I not known its life was gone, I would have thought it was in peaceful slumber. It looked so amicable with its delicate paws, its glossy black coat and the tiny eyes which even in death glistened like little beads. Its day, I imagine had begun with the sunrise and a bit of frolicking somewhere on the back patio amidst foliage and the shelter of plants large and small. As it lay in inert repose a tinge of melancholy crept over me. Reflection and gloom seem to go hand in hand. An innocent creature dies in a brutal attack - a life snuffed out. The fear of a violently approaching death must be the most horrifying of sensations. I put the body in a plastic bag and placed it in the garbage. I realized in that moment the harmony of the universe had been violated. Or was this death a manifestation of the way things are? I would never know for sure. And I doubt if anyone else does. Or ever will. |