Over the past week I received some thought-provoking lessons. For me, they are connected with our need to care for our environment and reverse climate change. They are also more immediately connected with the fall and winter season and some of the creatures living around me. My old farm house is on the edge of a village. That means that in the fall I experience an invasion. As the days shorten and temperatures drop, field mice find ways into the house to survive the winter cold. I can tolerate them if they stay tucked away, but not if they enter the kitchen. Unfortunately, several did. Two were dispatched, and I thought I was mouse-free for the season. Then a week later, there was unmistakable evidence of another mouse. But this one was different.
I was surprised by the location and actions of this mouse. It left evidence in places I had never seen contaminated before, on top of tables and my kitchen island, places that in the past had seemed inaccessible. It ate parts of apples and tomatoes. The next day I found the traps I had set, still set and empty! So, I reset them. The next day, I found the traps still set and still baited, and again, apples and even a capsule of Omega 3 fish oil eaten. A jar of peanut butter was knocked to the floor. Wow! Some mouse! I wondered what to do, how do I trap this mouse? And I was also developing a sneaking feeling of respect for this creature as well. This was an unusual mouse.
There were more surprising developments. As I stood quietly perusing the news on my tablet in the kitchen, a motion caught the corner of my eye. There was the mouse, peering at me from around the toaster. I yelped, and gestured, and it disappeared behind the appliance. I wasn’t sure what else to do, I had traps set. Then, it or I now believed, he, poked his head out from between two canisters, and I shooed him back again. This happened three times. We would stare at each other for a hot minute then I would shoo him away again. Another time, the dogs chased the mouse into the dining room from the kitchen. He escaped, a dark grey streak dashed across the dining room and through another doorway. I now had both wonderment and admiration for this mouse.
The story has a sad, but inevitable ending. The next day, the dogs did make contact with the mouse. I discovered the motionless mouse under the dish strainer. I thought it was dead. I wondered what could have happened. In a while, I noticed that his eyes opened more sometimes. Then I saw that his hindquarters looked damp. Hmm. That’s when I figured out that the dogs had found the mouse and snapped his hindquarters, mortally injuring him and then tossing him where he now lay. He lived for a while. After his death, I buried him among some cut branches in the snow. And I felt sad. I called him Pluck, a name to fit his character.
This is a long story. I told it in full to convey my growing respect for and the sense of character of this creature, a lowly mouse, almost universally despised. Bringing the story around to its beginning, I am mindful of how much our environment and all the living beings are threatened. Engaging with Pluck, literally looking him in the eye, made me realize that any one of these creatures can have character and a desire to live life, too. Even while we need to control ‘pests’ of all types, it is past time that we think with our heads and hearts about true stewardship of our planet and all living things.