The mouse (cont.)
Friday night, as I lay in bed, Stephen knocked on my door to tell me he’d seen the mouse scurrying through the vent between our rooms. Bianca still hadn’t killed the poor thing (but now we knew why she’d been waiting so long in Stephen’s armchair). … I went to sleep.
The next day, as I was napping on the couch, I again heard the mouse’s squeaking. Mary also heard it.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
That night we watched Arachnophobia (which is about spiders, not mice). When the movie ended, the mouse reappeared in Stephen’s room. We hurried to our stations. Edoarda, Stephen, and Bianca cornered the mouse. Martin & Mary hid. I tried to coax the mouse into a trash can.
Fleeing, the mouse jumped into a different trash can. Its little heart was thumping.
We felt such pity for it. What to do?
We couldn’t adopt it as a pet — clearly, it’d never get along with Bianca. Nor could we humanely offer it to Bianca to eat; nor could we bring ourselves to squash it. To put it outside would be to subject it to famine, to the cold, to other predators. Yet that was what we did. I left the mouse out on the lawn, and it began to crawl away.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The next morning, a hummingbird hovered outside our kitchen window; Martin called us to watch it, but we quickly lost interest (there are plenty of hummingbirds in Ecuador). I decided to go out to look for our sorry little mouse. It had moved away from the lawn; perhaps it was beginning a new life. Then I saw it on the sidewalk. It was dead.
One by one, we went out to pay it our respects. Mary built a grave for it, with yellow flowers.
The next day, as I was napping on the couch, I again heard the mouse’s squeaking. Mary also heard it.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
That night we watched Arachnophobia (which is about spiders, not mice). When the movie ended, the mouse reappeared in Stephen’s room. We hurried to our stations. Edoarda, Stephen, and Bianca cornered the mouse. Martin & Mary hid. I tried to coax the mouse into a trash can.
Fleeing, the mouse jumped into a different trash can. Its little heart was thumping.
We felt such pity for it. What to do?
We couldn’t adopt it as a pet — clearly, it’d never get along with Bianca. Nor could we humanely offer it to Bianca to eat; nor could we bring ourselves to squash it. To put it outside would be to subject it to famine, to the cold, to other predators. Yet that was what we did. I left the mouse out on the lawn, and it began to crawl away.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The next morning, a hummingbird hovered outside our kitchen window; Martin called us to watch it, but we quickly lost interest (there are plenty of hummingbirds in Ecuador). I decided to go out to look for our sorry little mouse. It had moved away from the lawn; perhaps it was beginning a new life. Then I saw it on the sidewalk. It was dead.
One by one, we went out to pay it our respects. Mary built a grave for it, with yellow flowers.
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| (Photo by Edoarda) |