About a Mouse

This is about a mouse.
At least, I think it is.

The other night, as I was setting up the coffeemaker for the morning, I heard something scratching around in the kitchen cupboards. I opened some doors and peeked warily inside, but saw nothing. Nevertheless, I baited and set a mousetrap and left it in one of the lower cupboards.

The next morning, the trap was still set. I assumed the intruder had found its way out the same way it came in, and I wrote it off. So it was, when I opened one of the cabinets that night, I was not expecting to literally come face to face with a field mouse. Our eyes met briefly before he dove for cover and I took an involuntary step back.

A brief chase ensued, where he easily dodged from shelf to shelf among the clutter, while I vainly tried to slap a plastic container over him. His bright eyes would watch me intently as I maneuvered for position, and then he would duck away as soon as I committed to a move. He finally tired of our cat and mouse game - he pulled a Jerry and easily slipped past me to the floor to disappear into the woodwork. Before I went to bed I set three traps: one in the cupboard where we met, one on the counter-top, and left the first one I set in the lower cabinet. Somewhere during the night, one of the traps went off. The familiar snap registered in my brain, but I almost immediately went back to sleep.

In the morning the trap that had been on the counter was gone. I looked in the cabinets, under appliances, along the floor; it was just gone. I mentally shrugged and proceeded with getting ready for work. I sat on the couch with my coffee, and was putting on my shoes when I heard a sound from near the fireplace. In the gray morning light I could see what I thought was the missing mousetrap, behind the wood rack. I put on my leather gardening gloves and moved everything out of the way so I could assess the situation.

The trap had caught one of his rear feet. Somehow he had managed to drag the trap off the counter, across the kitchen floor, and up onto the hearth of the living room fireplace. He was trying to get himself into an opening, but the trap kept him from going any further. Holding the trap, I gently started pulling him out of the crevice he was wedged in. I could feel him trying to pull away, scrabbling at the brick. As soon as I freed him I put the whole mess into a container and carried it to the empty lot across the street. Next to a good size bush I turned him out onto the soft soil. As soon as he was on the ground he tried to go for cover, still stuck in the trap. Holding the edges in my gloved fingers, I lifted up the bail and freed him. He sat there for a second, looking at me, then quickly scuttled under the bush.

As I walked back to the house, it came to mind that there was a good chance his foot was broken, and he would soon end as food for a snake, or a hawk, or a coyote. The intent of the mousetrap is to kill, and I would have been perfectly fine with that outcome. In fact, once he was caught, I could have killed him at any time. But I didn't, and I have to wonder why. Even though I released him into an uncertain future, my hope is that he (or she, I really don't know) doesn't quickly becomes another animal's dinner. I am under no illusions that the last look he gave me was in thanks for his freedom, but rather his assessing whether I was now going to eat him.

I believe that on a daily basis, life gives us an opportunity to learn something. Sometimes the lesson is hard, and painful, and we give it all of our attention. Often it is a subtle reminder, a gentle nudge that passes in the blink of an eye, and we skim past it in our hurry to get to the really "important" questions. But really big lessons can come in really small packages. Some of them mouse-sized.