Swiss Animal Stories
Mouse
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One cold night, my son, Mark, rescued an injured mouse from our cat, Diamond.  The following story recounts the events which transpired over the course of the next ten days... and beyond.

Mouse

                                                                                               

     "Diamond caught a mouse!  It's not dead."  I follow my fourteen-year-old son, Mark into the street.  A lightning flash illuminates a Spitzmaus – a mouse common in Swiss meadows – no larger than my thumb lying on its side in the middle of the cul-de-sac.  I touch it gently with a fingertip.  Its back legs push against the ground spinning it in circles with its head at the center.  Its right side appears lame.

      Recently, when our cat caught a mouse, I forced her to release it.  Its tiny chest expanded and contracted with each gasp for air, a rapid heartbeat visible in the soft, gray fur.  By the time I returned with a box, it had died.

     This mouse, too, appears to be dying.  As we crouch, large raindrops pelt the street.  Thunder rumbles.  Lightning lights the clouds overhead from within.  "We can't leave it here," Mark says. 

     I fetch a towel, scoop the mouse up, carry it into the garden where, shaping the towel so the mouse is supported in an upright position, I leave it under an awning outside Mark’s bedroom. 

     When I wake the next morning, my first thought is: ‘Mouse!’  I hurry into the garden and peer inside the towel.  Mouse rests upright in the indentation.  Her body seems rounder.  "She's alive!”  I call. 

     Mark pokes his head out the window.  Dressed in pajamas, he joins me and peeks into the towel.  "What are you going to do with her?"

     I flatten the towel to give her room.  She falls onto her side.  I mold the towel into a protective shape so she can stand.  "We can't set her free like this.  We'll have to keep her for a day or two to see if she recovers."  After Mark leaves for school, I put a cardboard box in the bathroom and place the towel with Mouse inside. 

     She must eat and she must drink.  What do mice eat?  Cheese?  Water melon?  I bring a cube of cheddar and some melon.  Would she like crêpes?  They would provide milk, egg, flour: a well-balanced diet.  And water?  She must have water!  How do you give water to a creature the size of a thumb?  In a bottle cap!  I dig into the glass and metal recycle bin.  When I offer cheese, Mouse nibbles two bites.  She seems to like melon.  I place a millimeter-thick crêpe beneath her millimeter-wide, long, pointed snout.  Underneath, her mouth is set well back from the tip.  She chomps and chomps.  Her eyes are so small that I cannot determine whether Diamond has scratched one out.  She seems almost, if not totally, blind.  Her snout moves from side to side sniffing like an anteater’s even when her head is still.  Smelling appears to be her way of exploring the world.  She has tiny nostrils and an array of whiskers.  When she finishes eating, tiny teeth marks outline a triangle of missing crêpe

     I fill the bottle cap to the brim with a few drops of tap water and hold it under her snout.  She pivots her head left and right, trying to escape the serrated rim.  At last, her snout contacts the water.  She drinks.

     When I set her down, she falls onto her side.  I form the towel to support her.  Her right front leg doesn’t move.  I place the crêpe beneath her snout and leave.  All morning, I fear that when I enter the bathroom, she will be dead.  I wish someone else had found her.

     The neighbor's hamster enjoys burrowing into sawdust.  I walk to the village store to purchase wood shavings.  "A Spitzmaus?"  the salesgirl asks.  "That will be difficult."  She hands me a bag of guinea pig food.

     "Is this the smallest animal you have food for?"

     "Yes."

     "What about bird seed?"

     "I don't think so.  Good luck."  I see in her expression, she does not believe a wild, injured Spitzmaus will survive. 

     Back home, Mouse is still alive.  Beside her are three black pellets.  I move the towel to one side of the box and fill the other with sawdust, place a small mound of guinea pig food on the shavings and lift Mouse onto it.  Sunflower seeds and tubes of pressed food are much too large for her mouth and miniscule teeth.  I hold the bottle cap with water under her nose every hour, pleased whenever she drinks.  

     Later, perhaps because of her new diet, her bowel movements become liquid and brown.  I remove the towel and fill the box with wood shavings, dig a slight indentation and, lifting her by her mid-section, set Mouse into.  She can do nothing to prevent this, neither walk, nor move forward.  She is totally dependent on me for food and drink.  I remember a Chinese or Japanese proverb:  "When you save a life, you are responsible for it forever."  I cover her with a feather-light gauze rag.

      Mark's friend, Stephan, comes over after school.  "We have a wild Spitzmaus.  Would you like to see her?"  I ask.  He accompanies me into the bathroom.  I lift the gauze.  Mouse is lying on her side, arms and legs stretched in front of her, mouth opening and closing as though gasping for air.  I glance at Stephan.  He stares at Mouse.  "She's not usually like this," I explain, shifting the sawdust to prop her up.  "See, she looks much better now."  Stephan glances at me sideways as though I am crazy. 

     By evening, Mouse’s bowel movements are green and soft, but no longer liquid.  Are salt and sugar difficult to digest?  I am so pleased when she pulls hard on her crêpe.  Although helpless, she is feisty and hungry, and she likes crêpes!  In case she recovers enough to climb out of the box, I move it into the bathtub and close the drain for the night.

     My husband wakes me early Saturday morning.  "Mouse is out of the box."  I hurry into the bathroom.  When I reach for her, she digs against the cold enamel at the edge of the cardboard.  The front half of her body disappears underneath it.  I lift the box, pick her up, and place her inside.

     At breakfast, I make crêpe without sugar or salt.  After breakfast, I move Mouse into the children’s abandoned aquarium.  She buries herself in the sawdust.  When I dig her out, her fur is coated with bits of wood to the tip of her nose.  How can she breathe?  I attempt to brush it away with a fingertip.  When I let her go, she digs into the sawdust again, disappearing except for her tail. 

     When I give her water, her little left paw rests against my fingertip, tiny fingers splayed.  I feel the infinitesimally small pressure of her hand on mine.  How fond I have grown of her!  "Hello, Mouse.  I love you,"  I tell her each time I enter the room.

     Sunday, she peeps when I pick her up.  I am pleased.  She is behaving more and more like a wild mouse.  I find a plastic lid and fill it with water.  When she kicks wood chips into it, the wood soaks up the water.  I check often during the day, clean away the shavings, refill the lid.  On Monday, I glue the coke bottle cap into the center of the lid and place worn-down beach glass around it to create a floor.  I fill the cap to the brim.  The few drops that spill remain on the lid beneath the glass.  I replace the gauze rag with strips from an old blue washcloth, then drive into Berne for gerbil food.  When I ask the salesgirl at the city pet store about bottles with spouts for dispensing liquid to small animals, she replies, "That wouldn't work with a Spitzmaus.  They aren't used to it."  As I pay, she regards me kindly with the same look I saw in the eyes of the salesgirl in our village.  "Good luck," she smiles.  I smile back. 

     On the fifth day, I lift the clothe strips and find Mouse rolled into a ball, fast asleep.  Her tiny body fits perfectly into one of the little round indentations she dug in the sawdust.  She is so cute!  She spends the entire day sleeping.  I wake her often to lift her to the water, feed her a bit of crêpe, show her gerbil food, offer carrot gratings, pear, apple slivers, a half-peeled grape (she didn't like), a crust of bread (she did).  When I reach into the terrarium, she scurries through loops and curlycue's – a network of tunnels she has created in the strips of cloth.  I hold her on the palm of my hand.  

     The sixth day, I leave her alone, content to imagine her curled into a tiny ball, fast asleep beneath her rags.  I don’t dig her up to feed her.  I am satisfied to observe her take one drink in the morning and one in the evening.  I tear strips from an old flannel bed sheet and add these to Mouse Town.

     Before I go to bed, she is asleep.  To make sure the long day's rest doesn’t mean she is ill, Mark and I wake her up.  He places her on his outstretched palm.   "Ouch!” he cries.  She flies six inches through the air and lands on the sawdust.  "She bit me!"

     "Let me see."

     "You don't see anything."

     "Make it bleed.  Squeeze it."

     "It doesn't bleed."  He squeezes the fingertip.  "It didn't break the skin, but you can see teeth marks."

     I barely distinguish two tiny reddish dots.  "Now we will have to keep her at least ten days from the day we found her to make sure she doesn't have rabies."

     "That's just an excuse.  You don't want to give her up!"

     At midnight, Mouse is buried.  At 2 a.m., she is above ground, moving around.  At six, she is awake.  She buries herself when I approach.  She must have scampered all over the terrarium half the night.  Sawdust and strips of clothe are leveled.  The water dish is covered with wood shavings.  She has found nothing to drink.  Her food is buried.  I clean shavings from the plastic lid, glass, and bottle cap, fill a jigger with water, and refill the cap to the brim.  I lift Mouse and place her nose over the water.  She drinks and drinks.  I can hear tiny slurps when I listen very closely.

     Thursday evening, when I dig her out of the wood shavings to move her to her food, she lunges forward a centimeter and bites my finger.  Her teeth are not large enough to penetrate human skin, but her bites hurt!  I am afraid to pick her up again.

     Wistfully, she sits in a corner facing out. 

     The next morning, the lid is again filled with sawdust.  I refill the bottle cap.  At the other end of the terrarium, Mouse sniffs the air, then beelines the length of the cage to take a long, deep drink.  All morning, like the snow leopard at the Zurich zoo, she paces the perimeter searching for a way out.  How much, I wonder, is one field mouse's freedom worth compared to the pleasure she brings into my life?       

     "What is a mouse's reason for being?” I ask my husband.  “Is she here to live and have babies, or is she here to provide food for others?"

     "To live," he replies.

     If I give her her life back, she might loose it.  I don’t want to let her go.  However, if I am going to, it must be soon.  Fall is in the air.  She will need time to fatten up before winter and,  if I keep her too long, she might forget how to be wild. 

     I call the doctor's office.  "You won't get rabies from a mouse,”  he tells me.     

     "So I can set her free?"

     "You can."  I am disappointed.

     Saturday night, it storms.  I cannot release Mouse into a storm.  Sunday, I wake up just before dawn and push aside the curtains: a cloudless sky.  The first hint of light should allow me to watch her after she is free.  I dress quickly.  Unwilling to be bitten, I nudge her toward the water.  She circles without drinking, but there will be plenty to drink in the meadow after the rain.  I uncover last night's crêpe and examine it for the missing triangle: she has eaten.  I fill a cardboard box with sawdust, scoop Mouse up in a wash clothe, and drop her in.  She burrows.  Outside, I carry the box to the edge of the meadow beside the carport, tear away one wall, and set it down.  She remains buried.  I turn on the carport light and dig her out.  She sniffs and moves.  I prod.  She strays over the edge and drops onto the dirt.

     I had imagined that as soon as she was free, she would dart across the meadow, but she moves awkwardly, turning this way and that, circling back.  Are her legs working properly?  On the hard dirt, she seems to favor her right side.  Is she fully recovered?  Afraid to pick her up, I wish I had thought to wear gloves.  Helpless, I follow her.  She stumbles onto the road.  I place the box in front of her and try to coax her back inside but the bottom won’t lie flat.  She attempts to burrow underneath it.  When I move it, she turns and wobbles across the low stone curb into the meadow.  It is too dark to see where she has gone.  I stand up, wishing with all my heart that I could get her back.  The meadow seems so inhospitable, now.  Perhaps it is too cold for a mouse above ground.  The dirt is hard; maybe too hard for digging.  It seems that all she can hope for is to wander aimlessly from clump to clump of grass.  With luck, she might fall into a mouse hole.  Why didn’t I search the meadow yesterday to find one to put her in? 

     "Where did you let her go?" my husband asks.

     "By the carport."

     "Near the road?!  Not lower down?"  Why hadn't I thought to release her at the bottom of the hill near the hedge?  Sadly, I return to the meadow.  The sky is already brighter.  I gaze at grass and clover.  Two yards from the road, a blade of grass moves.  It moves again.  None of the other blades are moving!  I approach.  Mouse!  I kneel beside her, following on hands and knees.  Each time I grab for her tail, she scurries away, not quickly, but too quick for me.  Would it hurt to pick her up by the tail?  She doubles back.  Her tiny body brushes softly against the skin of my calf for several inches, her touch small, soft, and warm like a whisper, ‘goodbye.’  

     Determined, I lower finger and thumb over her tail, but cannot feel it.  It slips away as she disappears into a clump of grass.  I watch the edges, waiting for her to appear.  Hiding – that is what she is good at.  I mark the tuft with a stick and hurry into the house for gerbil food.  When I return, I probe the grass mound.  She is no longer here.

     I arrange a bridge of sawdust from the curb into the cardboard box.  Periodically during the day, I search the shavings, but she does not return.  I bring Diamond to the meadow.  Maybe she can find her.  She sniffs the box, sits down beside it.  Her ears twitch.  She peers into the meadow.  Something is out there.  "Find Mouse, Diamond!"  She turns and saunters across the road, spies something in the neighbor’s yard, crouches low, creeps.  I drag her from beneath a bush and carry her into the house. 

     Again and again, I stand at the edge of the meadow, watching, hoping, searching for a blade of grass that moves.  At noon, the meadow glitters with a hundred drops of dew – water for a mouse. 

     When the neighbor’s cat appears, I yell, "Phooey!  Phooey!  Shoo!  I'm coming to get you!" pull off my socks and plunge, barefoot, into the meadow.  The cat slinks away, stops between me and a second cat I hadn’t noticed.  Later, a third cat appears.  I chase it away.

     Sometimes I convince myself there aren't that many dangers in the meadow.  What are the odds a cat will stumble across a mouse curled up fast asleep in the grass?  Or did Mouse continue wandering until she found a hole, or did she stumble upon a cat?  Could she dig a new burrow?  If I had realized how much I would miss her, how much I would worry, I would never have let her go. 

     The second day is a little easier.

     On the third day, I look at the meadow and smile.  At least one small creature out there is no longer a stranger to me.  I am not sure about my particular Mouse, but she has many cousins and aunts and uncles, all curled into little balls, perhaps on a bed of dry grass, fast asleep in their burrows.  At night, they come out and roam the meadow, and peep if you try to pick them up.

 

Afterword

     After dark, two weeks later, Mark and I are in the craft room.  The door into the garden is open.  Just after I close it, Mark says, "There is a mouse in here.  A mouse in your house is a pest."  He echoes a lesson taught to Swiss school children.  Sure enough, a field mouse scurries behind the work bench near the door.

     "What kind?!"  I ask.

     "A Spitzmaus."

     "It can't be.  It's too big and round for a Spitzmaus."

     "Yes, it is a Spitzmaus." 

     The mouse turns.  As it approaches, I bend down and peer: a Spitzmaus – I can tell by the thin, pointed snout.

     "Is it our mouse?"

     "I don't think so."

     “It seems bigger and fatter than our mouse.”  It scurries across the open, lit floor headed toward the dark recesses beneath the shelves.  If it gets in there, we will never find it. 

     "We need to let it out," Mark says.  

     I open the door.  The mouse turns and crosses, not quickly, to the doorway.  "Do you think she can climb over the sill?"  I ask.  As though in answer, it climbs over the aluminum ridge into the trough in the middle, taking its time, sniffing.  It nibbles at something, climbs over the second ridge, scrambles down to the walk, scurries along the wall, and disappears around a corner into the night.  I race to turn on the outside light, hurry along the wall, but cannot see it.  "It was our mouse, Mark!  It must have been."

     "That's not possible."

     "This mouse was much too tame for a wild mouse.  They aren't like that!  This mouse was used to the light, and to our voices.  It was as though she knew us!  It was Mouse!"

***

     During five years living by the meadow, we have never been visited by a Spitzmaus. 

    

 

This story is for my friend, Gerd, who also found a mouse.