Many years ago, my friend and I were walking from his house to my house in North Jackson. Probably 3 to 4 miles as the crow flies, but we also had to traverse busy Interstate 55 to get from one house to the other. Remember those days when walking everywhere or riding a bike was awesome? What ever happened to those days? Ah, the freedom.
Anyway, we were out there dodging the hauling ass traffic and as we stood in the median of the highway I looked down and noticed that there were field mice running all over the place. Zillions of them it seemed, all cute, brown and fuzzy. Well, being the intelligent fellows that we were at the time, aged 13 or 14, we began to chase the little critters in an effort to catch some of them. What we were going to do with them, who knew, but the impulse of children is as unworldly as the Crab Nebulae. The game was on!!
We ran around in that median for half an hour with cars zipping by at ridiculous speeds, trying to catch these tiny mice that scrambled about faster than some of the traffic. We dipped and dodged, leaped, pounced, stumbled and fell in the knee high sawgrass. I'm sure to the innocent passerby we must have appeared insane, or drugged, out there in the grass, blazing around in seemingly random circles and jaunts. Occasionally lurching forward in some crazed fashion at some unseen entity. In retrospect, I'm quite surprised there wasn't a 20 car collision because of our ignorant spectacle.
Sweating and gasping for breath, the score up to this point was Stupid Kids 0, Mice 27. We hadn't caught a single mouse and our failure only reinforced our deranged desire to capture the feral beasts. We began anew. Tromping through the high grass, lunging forward, tumbling to the ground, hauling up double-handfuls of grass, dirt and the ubiquitous flotsam of a roadway median. Then, just as we were about to give up, I saw four mice bolt inside of the open end of a piece of tire innertube. Score!! We ran over, scooped up both ends and shrieked with excitement over the capture of these poor creatures!! To the victor goes the spoils!!! Aaaarrgghhhh!
And off we went with our prize. We were going home.
When we arrived at home, Dad was there, ever present on the couch and so was my brother Toad, home from college, watching football, lazy and undisturbed. Until we walked in.
Dad scowled, "Hey, what'cha got that tube for?"
Proudly and in unison, "We caught some mice!"
"Mice?? Well, what the hell for?" he said.
His face said it all and we answered with confused silence. Why wasn't he as excited as we were, I thought to myself?
"Well, bring 'em over here for a look", Dad said flatly.
Sulking, we hauled our filthy, mouse-infested innertube over to Dad.
Dad barked, "Open it."
We did. Opened one end. Nothing happened.
Maybe we suffocated the mice. Maybe they died from fear! My god, are they even still in there!!?
All three of us peered deeply into the dark hole of the tube. Todd rolled over on the couch, completely uninterested.
Dad grabbed his cigarette lighter, flicking the roller until the soft glow of the butane flame warmed the hole. Still nothing.
Somebody on the television scored a touchdown.
The three of us peered further into the black hole of the tube when in a brown flash of movement, the tube erupted like a mouse volcano!! Tiny, brown, flying bodies shot out at crazy angles! Rodent laser beams! Mouse rockets! One to the left, two to the right, one flying rodent glided under the couch. And two more bubbled up from the darkness of the tube! Unbelievable!!
Chaos ensued and even Toad was rousted from his slovenly slumber as we tittered about trying to capture the escaped mice! Two grown men, two teen boys and a half dozen mice or so careening around the living room of our home. The mice diving for any cover they could find, a stupid human hot on the trail in hopes of capturing the speeding animals!
Dad was in a rage, "Goddamnit, what kind of fool kids bring a tube full of mice into the house!"
Toad never said a word. He was on the hunt.
"Hey, there goes one," my friend Eric screeched, as a little brown bullet made a hard right turn into my bedroom! I ran over, but it was too late, he was gone.
Dad cornered one behind the couch and somehow got his hands around it. He charged for the door and flung the poor, tumbling mouse into the hedges off the porch. This was upsetting to see. I began screaming, babbling craziness like "You can't throw the mice! I wanted him!"
"Shut up damnit!" Dad bellowed.
"But daddy. . ."
"SHUT UP!"
By this time, I was crying my eyes out! Horrified at the thought of losing my mice, especially at the hands of my callous father, that evil man! My brother caught the second mouse and hurled him into the bush. This cranked up my emotional distress by a factor of fourteen. I was in a fit of tears, anger, loss and complete and utter detachment from reality. The walls of my narrow world were crumbling around me, all at the cost of seven brown field mice. I was in a state of shock. My world slowed as I watched the madness around me. The words were coming out of my dad's mouth in large cap script. I could see the words flowing from him: GODDAMN MICE! WHAT THE HELL! KILL THAT SONOFABITCH!
The commotion was so great, powerful and disturbing that it roused the curiosity of our seventeen pound tomcat named Sammy. He had been sleeping on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen and I heard the familiar thud as he hurtled to the floor. In a word, Sammy was badass. Even dogs, five times heavier and larger, didn't mess with Sammy. He owned the yard, and he certainly owned this house and if anything, he wasn't going to allow a Saturday afternoon of slumber be interrupted by harebrained human hijinks.
Sammy breached to doorway of the living room to sleepily observe Todd, Dad and Eric in full tornadic flight as they chased these stupid mice from one corner to the next. I think for a moment, Sammy was going to chalk it all up to the long and ever-growing list of strange human behaviors he had seen before, shrug it off, and return to his warm perch. That was, until he saw the first mouse.
From zero to a million miles an hour that cat moved and in one second, he had a dead mouse hanging from his mouth.
I. Went. Insane.
"DAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDYYYYYYYY!!!!!!! Sammy is killing the mice!!!!!!!"
Oh, the horror of it all. It was bad enough that the defenseless little creatures were being hurtled into the bushes. It was another thing to see a blood-thirsty, demon-cat sucking the life out of these warm, fuzzy mice. All I wanted to do was pet them. That was it. The crux of my dilemma. They looked soft. I wanted to pet them. I was devastated.
And when I thought it couldn't get any worse, a mouse shot out from under the couch. Sammy landed on him like an atomic bomb. It was over before it began. Dead mouse number two! I think in that moment, my stress was so high that I actually left my body and was floating around the ceiling of the living room with a vertical view of the carnage. Dad floating strings of obscenities. Todd with a crooked and sadistic grin of enjoyment. My friend Eric, hands in pockets, useless. A dead, bleeding mouse with holes in it's head on the carpet. Another being munched to bits by my evil cat. I couldn't believe the scene. This couldn't be real.
Just then, I noticed a slow, creeping, brown body emerge from my bedroom. Everyone in the room saw it and in the same moment, it was Pickett's Charge towards the poor animal. Two grown men, two teen boys and a seventeen pound tomcat all headed for the same doorway. I have no doubt that the resulting collision of bodies was accurately measured by earthquake sensors in Nevada and the sole survivor was the mouse who headed for the open front door. And out he went, bailing off the porch into the same bush where his brethren had gone before.
We were in a daze. How could this have happened? It was all very confusing. And it was over. From our count we believed that the house had been cleansed of the feral invaders. Eric was sent packing, I was sent to my room, Todd and Dad resumed couch duty and Sammy curled up in a sunbeam for a twenty minute groom.
I was lying in my bed, sobbing, reliving the devastation I had witnessed when I saw a tiny brown mouse emerge from behind my chest of drawers.
Oh god, not again!
I eased over as quietly as I could. I didn't want to disturb anyone, especially the cat and I absolutely had to catch this mouse. I couldn't witness another death. I grabbed a t-shirt and flung it over the mouse, scooping the mass up into my hands. I had him! I had the mouse!
I slowly unraveled the shirt until I found the mouse borrowed deep in the fabric. I grasped him in my other hand gently. I had the mouse. I had the mouse. I finally had my mouse. I can pet him now. I stuck my finger out and stroked his tiny head. I could see the fear in his eyes and the quick twitching of his whiskers as he assessed his situation. I'm sure in his little brain it didn't look too promising, but he had nothing to fear. I just wanted to pet the mouse.
And I did.
I stuck my finger out again to feel the soft fur of his tiny head. It was so quick I didn't even see it, but I damn surely felt it. The mouse was now firmly attached to the end of my bleeding index finger. I was running around the room, flapping my hand wildly in a effort to unhinge this vile creature, but he held firm. Tears welled up in my eyes as I did an Indian dance of panic and thrashed my hand around with this mouse dangling effortlessly from the tip of my finger. I whirled about and looked down to see the empty eyes of this mouse as he hung on against the natural forces of circular movement. He seemed at peace. I was in a hysterical fright!
At last, the little beggar let go and tumbled through space across the room, disappearing behind the bed. My circular transit stopped and now I was traveling up and down as I hopped in place holding my spurting finger. The blood didn't bother me, nor the extent of my injury; all I could see in my mind's eye was a progression of large intravenous needles containing rabies serum. I had heard all the stories. Fifty needles into the stomach for anyone who contracted rabies. Oh god, it's over! It's truly over! What do I do now? Could this day be any worse?
I relaxed a bit, bandaged up the end of my finger and spent the next two hours looking for that mouse in my room as I weighed the options of fessing up to my father about my injury or riding it out the situation to see if any rabies developed. I guess it would be fairly difficult to cover up a foaming mouth should I get sick, but I decided then and there that I wouldn't tell dad. I'd take my chances, foaming mouth or not. There was no way I was going to get fifty shots in my stomach.
I never found the mouse. I guess Sammy probably disposed of him one day while I was at school.
I never developed rabies either and I never told my dad that I got bit. Maybe 20-something years later I should finally fess up. Clear my conscience. Ease the burden.
Boy, my finger sure does itch.
Maybe I should see a doctor after all.
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