Earnest Mouse-Owner Gilds the Cage . . . and Then Some

Life often burdens us with responsibilities we didn’t ask for.

A few days ago I was given a tiny white mouse. It was hardly more than an inch long, snow white, with a pink nose and pink eyes. It was in a clear plastic box that measured about 8-by-7 inches. The box had a pink top with air slits. The bottom was covered with chips.

The gift was a joke, of course. I had made a talk at Long Beach City College and afterwards Lois Clark, who had introduced me, said, “You use a computer, don’t you?” When I said yes she handed me the cage and said, “Then you need a mouse.”

I had a mouse. It was mine. Fate had put it in my care. It was my responsibility. Very well. I could put it out in the trash; or I could let it out into the back yard, where it would soon be eaten by predators; or I could simply let it die and then put it out in the trash.

When I got home I put the cage on the bar top. The mouse was darting about, trying to climb the plastic walls. It didn’t seem to have anything to eat. I put a piece of lettuce and a pinch of cheese in the cage. In the morning the lettuce and cheese seemed to be gone. The mouse had burrowed in and was sleeping.

“What are you going to do with him?” my wife asked. She had taken in numerous dogs and cats and kept several birds, but she didn’t seem eager to take in a mouse.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you do with a mouse?”

Already I knew I couldn’t throw him out in the trash. How quickly we become attached even to the least of creatures.

“Maybe the grandchildren would like him,” she suggested.

I telephoned their house. Their mother answered. “I wondered if the kids would like to have a mouse,” I said.

“No way,” she said. “Not in this lifetime.”

That sounded final. I called my older granddaughter. She is known to love animals. She wasn’t in. I left a message but she never called back.

“Maybe you could take it up to the school,” my wife suggested.

That seemed like a good idea. Mt. Washington School is at the top of the hill. I knew that they had adopted a dog and kept it for years. But the mouse’s cage was getting grungy. I thought I ought to refresh it before I offered it to the school.

I drove it to Hal’s Pet Shop. Hal and his wife and now their daughter, Shelly, had been providing us with pet supplies for years. I had no idea that they were into mice.

Shelly didn’t seem surprised. She said the cage was too small. “You have mouse cages?” I asked. She fetched a white metal mouse cage that was about 10-by-12 inches and had a wheel.

“He needs the wheel for exercise,” she said.

“What’s that stuff in the bottom of the cage?” I asked.

“Pine chips,” she said.

“You carry those?”

“Of course.”

I bought the cage, a sack of pine chips, a water bottle and a sack of mouse food. It came to $27.36. I wrote a check.

I told her I hoped to give it to the school and I thought I ought to provide supplies. Shelly reached into the little cage to remove the mouse. It bit her. “You mean little mouse!” she said. She picked it up again and said “I’ll get you another one. Schoolchildren shouldn’t have one that bites.”

She turned to go get a new mouse. “No,” I said. “Then it wouldn’t be my mouse!”

Shelly stopped and studied me. I had surprised us both.

“All right,” she said. “It was probably just scared. It hasn’t bit me again.”

She put the mouse in the new cage and put the cage and the supplies in a sack and I drove up to the school. I went into the office with the cage. “I was wondering if you wanted a mouse,” I asked a clerk. She looked uncertain.

Just then a teacher walked in. She was Randi Tunick, who teaches sixth grade. She said her children would love it. “We already have a rat,” she said. “It’s name is Turbidity.”

“Funny name for a rat,” I observed.

“It means, cloudy, dark. I just liked the word.”

So I have discharged my responsibility. The mouse has a home and a friend named Turbidity.

Every pupil wrote me a thank-you note. They called the mouse Jack.