You can love anything. I learned that years ago when my daughter bequeathed a pair of mice to me and the number of mice grew quickly to twenty-three. They lived with me until the last one expired from natural causes.
My dining room became a mousery. The mice all had wheels, igloos and toys. Each of the males had a separate cage, a personality, and a name. The females hung out together in a huge aquarium and showed little interest in the world outside their habitat. They were almost indistinguishable from one another, except the matriarch. She seemed to have special status in the family.
About a year into my stewardship I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece that I came across last week. I thought it might be interesting to share my mouse experience here, on Hive.
How Do We Pet a Mouse?
Like just about anything else, this takes practice.
In my experience, it is safest to alert the target
By puffing a bit of air ever so gently
Into the cage. This tack works with mice
That know us. A strange mouse will not be receptive.
Whatever demeanor we adopt, a mouse
Will defend its territory against all intruders.
Male mice are especially ferocious. They kill
Their cagemates without any provocation.
Leave two mature males together and
There will be a slaughter. Alpha rules.
I have seen a smaller, weaker mouse
With chunks of fur chewed out of its back.
Female mice are convivial, by contrast, though
Congeniality generally ends at the food dish.
A mouse will go to the mat when it comes to food,
Even when all members of the group are family.
In murine society, the specter of starvation is part
Of the collective subconscious. Food supply is primal.
But let us leave inter-mouse dynamics
And return to the issue of humans petting mice.
If the object of our attention, the mouse, recognizes us
As its food source, a hand in the cage may be endured.
The mouse might even look to us for company.
If that stage of mouse-human rapprochement develops
We will have won the campaign to pet our mouse.
However, it's better to be wiser than not.
Pet the mouse, and get a tetanus shot.
I did learn to love the mice. I felt sorry for the males, doomed to live alone and celibate. The females were close by, right across the room. At least the females had each other and plenty of food.
Watching the mice go through their brief life cycle was sobering. They seemed to experience many of our ailments. One of the females was evidently suffering near the end, so I took her to be euthanized.
Someone in the vet's waiting room laughed at me because I was so upset. But, as I wrote in the beginning of this piece, we can love anything. That's true, even if it doesn't love us back.
