Mice Life
by Jenny Humphrey
I killed a mouse yesterday – not intentionally but it suffered and I felt terrible. When I found its limp, furry little body on top of the compost, eyes closed and tiny feet curled, I cried. Some would say silly of me but I can’t help it. No matter how long I garden and make compost I cannot get used to the fact that I will find the odd mouse and it needs to be dealt with. All I could see however, was a dead Hunca Munca and I thought I had allowed her to escape.
Earlier in the day I had been turning the compost in my very large compost bin. The previous week I had spread over my garden beds the black, sweet, friable compost from last year’s bin and this day’s job was to turn the smelly mass of rotting apples and a year’s worth of garden debris and kitchen plant waste into its new bin so that it could magically become nutritious soil for next fall’s muck spreading. As I was turning the lumpy mixture a pretty, little grey head appeared between the tines of my fork. “Oh mouse” I shrieked as if I had never seen one before. I immediately retreated from the composting chore to allow Hunca Munca to get away and she waddled off between some banana peels. Little did I know I had fatally injured her for when I returned, there she was, dead.
It is not as if this has never happened to me before. I sliced a mouse in two once while digging, crippled a mouse in a trap by breaking its back leg and it screamed for a day before I realised what the noise was. I also once inadvertently fed one too much saved garden seed so that, just like Pooh, it got stuck in the tiny hole through which it had gained access to my greenhouse. However, I cannot get over this natural part of being a gardener and I’m always really upset by these events especially when I have to deal with the situation and find the mouse traps.
I continued my chore after asking my husband to bag the dead body but as I was working I could hear a rustle. I stopped, listened and looked around. There sitting innocently on top of an upturned flower pot amongst the dry fall leaves were two Hunca Muncas missing their lost relative no doubt, one sitting up on hind legs on lookout duty while the other busied away enjoying some freshly discovered nibbles. They were just enjoying a simple life and not harming anyone.
These tiny, furry, warm bodied mammals are an integral part of nature’s life cycles and when an owl flies off with one I don’t weep. So in contemplating my human sensitivity I decided that it must be because these little creatures cannot speak for themselves, are defenceless against lumbering great mammals with pitch forks and I probably have read too many children’s stories involving mice.
Hunca Munca is a mouse in the Beatrix Potter Story, “The Tale of Two Bad Mice”
Thanks for sharing your experience with the mouse. I was reminded of another writer, a poet, who also wrote about his experience after turning a mouse up in her nest with his plough, back in November, 1785. Robert Burns, Scotland's National Bard, was so moved that he wrote a poem called "To A Mouse".
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