Rat and mouse

I received the plea for help early in the afternoon, and within the hour or so I was at ground-zero: The kitchen of my friend which had been accordingly quarantined due to mice infestation.

There was at first not much to see but cupboards once filled with foods and pots and pans, now empty and bare. Then something moved. And shifted again. A little head, beady eyes. Disappearing into a small gap. My first encounter with the culprit. Little black bits lay on the floor here and there.

I opened my backpack and took out my expert mouse catching device. Two plastic tupperware boxes that only the day before contained home-made soup and stirfry vegetables I had brought to work with me. Now they were to serve as the mice's temporary prison hold.

That is if they could be caught. My friend started seeing them around her feet a few days ago. Five, or more, little mice, fur still gray and fresh, but nonetheless already cunning and ever so hungry. It is a real nuisance, a mouse in the house, as I only know too well from my own encounter with Musco Mousovic exactly a year ago. And at first my friend wanted to go buy mouse traps and poison, but I offered to help, hoping perhaps a little suffering could be averted. After all, as a Rat myself, I feel for the predicaments of my fellow rodent-kind. That, and plus I had nothing planned on this rainy Saturday.

At first I left the cupboard doors open, and lured the mice with bits of chocolate, croissant, and even sweet smelling stroopwafels. Later they would be treated to bits and pieces of MMs, and we wondered whether the mice go wild from the sugar high. But an open door was no invitation to dinner, I realised, as the mice would not come out, even though I could hear them squeak and scurry behind the wooden boards. So I closed the doors and left them to be.

Moments later, a mouse came and stayed. It had somehow burrowed and fallen its way into a cupboard where the only way out was if it could climb up the vertical walls like Spidermouse. Effectively, it was trapped, and I could see it, sniffing away, chasing its own tail in confusion, perhaps unaware a pairs of eyes were watching.

I sneaked up on it, and swiftly covered the little mouse with the semi-transparent lunchbox turned up-side-down. Gottcha! The mouse sniffed the box, and hurried around it bumping its little head against all four sides. It even stood up and seemed to be trying to gnaw and scratch its way out. I tried to close the lid by sliding it under the box, but the mouse was smart, and squeezed its agile little body through the gap in that instant as I was trying to seal the lid. It leapt and ran, and vanished.

Disheartened, I closed the doors and hoped it would come out to play again. And it did, not long thereafter. Again, I repeated the procedure, and this time with help I used a thin board to slide under the box and cover it. We watched it as it leaned against the side of the box, eyes seemingly filled with sadness.

But when the path of man and mouse in house built for man cross, the mouse must yield. I wanted to push the mouse out the window, but was realised that it would be a painful and horrible death, which would have defeated the purpose of me catching them. The black beady eyes begged for mercy. In the end, I took the mouse out to a grassy area in front of the house, and released into the shrubs. It was drizzling, and the droplets kissed my skin as white fog escaped my lips with the words "Goodbye little mouse." Soon thereafter it would be joined by one of its darling sibling.

Legend has it that there was once a race between animals in all the land, and the Emperor announced he would classify the years according to the first twelve animals that arrived. The Rat crept into the ear of the Bull, and rode all the way to the finish line, only leaping forward to win at the very last moment. So it came to be that the Rat is first in the Chinese zodiac.

It may not be warm, or be filled with ample rice or dried fruits and pungent sweets and biscuits outside, but they will manage. They will manage, I know, because they ingenious, cunning, cute and ever so inventive creatures. They will find a way to live, because they have a strong will and sense of surivival.

That I know.