It wasn’t that I was afraid of the mouse. I didn’t let out the stereotypical “eek” or consider leaping onto a chair, even if I were still agile enough to manage it. I was more startled. In retrospect, I have to admit the mouse was kind of cute, but there was no question I wanted it out out out. And now I’m wondering what exactly it is that makes me anxiously count the days until we can give Ed a lot of money to do major mouse-proofing.
“It feels like an invasion,” someone suggested. No, not exactly that. Someone else told me about their mouse-ridden apartment in Paris and a landlord who scoffed at his complaint and said those mice had been there since the 15th century. I think of the delightfully Parisian “Ratatouille” (though, fortunately, I am dealing with his smaller cousin) and all the other charming storybook mice. Stuart Little! Maisie! Angelina Ballerina! Despereaux! Poor unloved Alexander and that wind-up lookalike! And someone did suggest I give the mouse a cookie, but who’s to say I wouldn’t soon be visited by a muffin-hunting moose.
So, ok cute. But why am I something a little more negative than simply startled? Disease potential? Check. Of course. But even given where cats’ and dogs’ faces sometimes get to, people still cuddle them and kiss them and invite them onto laps and into beds. So what is it about the mouse that makes me insist on the singular “mouse” and pull back from the thought of plural “mice” and pull back from the thought of its being my roommate?
Without burdening the mouse with a philosophical outlook, I think the distaste lies in the mouse’s total negation of thousands of years of human civilization. At the first sighting I quickly left the room and shut the door. Door? Ha! It might keep out a larger intruder, but the fraction of an inch at the bottom goes unnoticed as the mouse puts my space to his or her purpose. Our walls have openings we don’t see. Welcome heat enters into our rooms through pipes with enough space around them for easy mouse access. Likewise electricity, water, air conditioning. It’s not so much that we are afraid or even inconvenienced by them. It’s that we barely exist in the world we think is ours. Far from being the boss of them, we’re not even in the room where anything happens.
It feels more like outrage: how dare they invade our carefully curated space. Here we are sitting in our living room, surrounded by our selected books, maybe even books autographed by talented friends. We are having Important Conversations. And along comes a tiny creature living its own life in the same space, not recognizing our ownership, barely noticing us. We’re the kings and queens of the jungle, the pinnacle of creation on the planet. How can this being go about its small life in total ignorance of our importance, our power?
Meanwhile we wait for Ed and his mouse-proofing skills. It’s not killing or harming, but simply creating a barrier between our space and mouse space. Surely the world is big enough for both.