Beastie

Just the quickest glimpse of this morning as I entered the pre-dawn kitchen to get breakfast and prepare for school. Just the merest flicker in my periphery; it might have been an eyelash falling. A few minutes later, there!, a definite tail attached to a tiny animal scurrying into the side room. A few strides forward and I was in time to see it disappear into a closet.

A mouse, maybe one of several. This is the season for brown field mice to find their way inside. Perhaps because I've been sealing the house for winter, this one which may have been reconnoitering is trapped. Not unattractive, mice nibble, nest, leave droppings, can carry disease, and do stink. They've got to go.

This one, however, seemed oblivious to our ancient enmity, for it came out of the room with the closet and ran under the stove whence it assayed an excursion into the center of the room. With tiny bead-like eyes, active and uplifted tail, it seemed reckless. Hadn't its teachers instructed it in caution? A quick stamp of my foot and it beat a hasty retreat back under the stove from which it peeped out.

This house is no stranger to animal visitors: ants, spiders, moths (these last few evenings) make their way in through their secret entrances and exits, so too mice this time of year. It's small house with room enough for two empty-nesters, but, sorry, none for you.

You are, though, such a pretty little creature: compact, delicate, quick, and with a boldness suggesting youth and callow inexperience. Though you're not quite the 'wee, sleekit, cowerin, tim'rous beastie,' I can still say with Robert Burns:

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

It's not with pleasure that tonight I set the traps.