Maus

In the movie The Green Mile there is a mouse named Mr. Jingles who gets the gift of long life from a miraculuous healer. The mouse lives for 60+ years, same as the lead character who also lives much longer due to divine intervention. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is a story about compassion, empathy, death and contradictions.

I have a mouse in my house too. Or I had one until I gave him the heave ho. I saw my mouse last week as he was sneaking along the wall in the living room. I cornered him underneath a bookcase and then played out our little game of cat and...never mind. I fetched a small stick from the kitchen to shoo him from underneath the bookcase but I didn't have a box or some other vessel to put him in. So we played this little game where I would chase him to the other side of the room where he'd hide underneath something else and I'd then scare him to another spot. This went on for fifteen minutes until I could see that he was exhausted under the TV stand. I could have wailed him with the stick but he'd put up such a good fight that I didn't have the heart for it. I gave up and he eventually escaped into the kitchen and out to safety.

I should mention that I've set up several mousetraps in the house. All three are baited with Swiss cheese because that's what they use in Looney Tunes cartoons to catch cartoon mice. Who am I to argue with such logic? As a matter of fact, I've learned most of my behaviour patterns from cartoon characters, much to my detrement. Anyway, the traps are there. A little mousie need only stick his snoot into one of them and his little rodent brain would be crushed beyond recognition. I prefer to use mousetraps because they're so impersonal. I can kill a mouse and not feel bad about it because I'm not the one who actually got his hands dirty. So to speak. Never mind that I bought it, baited it, set the trap and gingerly placed it in a strategic position. Ultimately it's the mouse itself that makes the life or death decision. My conscience is clear. So like a grizzled old mountain man of old, I check the trap lines every morning to see if any of these vermin have lost their lives to the only machine that doesn't need a new model every year.

And who coined them as "vermin" in the first place? The've been around in various forms for 60 million years. Were it not for a chance encounter with a large comet that struck somewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula, our species wouldn't have emerged from the shadow of the dinosaurs. But it was rodent-like mammals that started the ball rolling in our eventual rise to humanity. From rodents to lemurs to monkeys to apes, our heritage can be traced back to our friends with the funny whiskers and almost human-like hands. We owe them a debt of gratitude. Or so says I.

My next encounter with my little cheeto loving friend was three days ago. I saw him in the kitchen trying to get by me into the dining room. I cut him off and waited until he made his move. He darted across the entrance to the downstairs bathroom and ducked behind Jackson's food bowl. It's a long rectangular food trough that I've been using for two different dogs for more than twenty years. I lifted the edge of the food trough and put it down. I heard Mr. Mouse squeaking loudly and I knew that the edge of the trough had caught him by the tail. I'VE GOT HIM! I wanted to get his tail from out under the food trough quickly so I grabbed a plastic bowl and waited on one side of the trough. He darted right into the bowl. I had him! Wait. No, I didn't, He hopped right over the edge and back on the floor. I quickly put the bowl on top of him and found a large piece of cardbord to insert gently underneath so I'd have him contained. I turned the whole thing over, opened the kitchen door and walked outside. I could feel him shuffling about as he tried to escape but I held the cardboard top firm. I continued walking until I was about a hundred yards down the back alley. I removed the cardboard top to see that the inside of the white plastic bowl was streaked with blood. He'd probably injured his tail when I dropped the food trough on it. Without blinking an eye I tossed him into a pile of leaves and branches. Goodbye little fella, sorry about the tail but it'll heal and you'll be back to your old self real soon. I walked back to the house feeling rotten about his injury but glad that he was outside and that the mousetraps hadn't gotten to him first.

In The Green Mile the little mouse, Mr. Jingles, gets a reprieve from certain death when the healer takes his dead and lifeless body into his hands and blows the breath of life back into him. The mouse would live for many more decades, long beyond the normal lifespan of normal mice. Like my little friend, he'd been given a second chance at life. This wasn't quite as dramatic a finish but was at least somewhat symbolic. Meanwhile back at the house the instruments of death lie in wait.