By Betty Wilson Beamguard
I’ve been told that it’s not normal to love mice, no more normal than it is to love snakes, though that’s somewhat acceptable because of its shock value. It’s even cool in some circles to like snakes. But I don’t know of anybody who shares my love of mice. My in-laws made it abundantly clear what they thought of my letting mice have the run of the house when the kids were small. And I know it wasn’t sanitary, but you don’t worry so much about things like that when you’re young. We never got sick from it, and mice are as clean as some of the pets people let run in and out of the house.
Back when Randal had just made store manager at Winn-Dixie and I had my hands full taking care of two babies, Randal’s uncle let us rent a four-room house built back in the 50’s—one they’d moved out of after they put up a seven-room brick ranch next door. The house had a pasture right behind it, so when the field mice got cold and hungry, they wiggled their way inside. I’ve read they don’t have collar bones, so the little boogers can squeeze through the tiniest hole.
We moved there the fall Mandy was two and Boo six months. That winter we saw mice all the time. Randal and I would have a puzzle out on the card table, working away, and one would run across the floor, or we’d hear them scrambling around overhead. One even ate a dime-size hole in the ceiling tiles. I felt bad about that, but the ceiling needed to be redone anyway.
I don’t remember them making a mess in the kitchen except in the big drawer in the bottom of the stove where I kept the skillets and baking pans. I’d see them jump out of there all the time when I opened it, right over the back of the drawer. But since everything in the drawer was used for cooking, and heat kills germs, I figured they weren’t a health hazard.
One evening, right before I put the kids to bed, I saw a mouse run under the sofa. They were usually asleep when the mice came out. I wanted them to see this one, so I got a cornflake and laid it about a foot from the couch. Then I settled cross-legged in the corner and gathered the kids into my lap. They sat so still and quiet in their footy jammies, their bodies soft and warm against mine, their hair smelling like baby shampoo. We didn’t have long to wait. That little mouse ran out, picked up the cornflake in his mouth and dashed back under the sofa. Mandy and Boo squealed with delight.
That December, the night after we put up the Christmas tree, I was in the living room rocking Boo to sleep because he had an ear ache. Only the tree lights were on, and a mouse skittered from under the sofa and ran toward the corner where we’d set up the tree. I stopped rocking and held my breath as I watched him screech to a halt and stand up on his hind legs to look at the tree. It was like he was trucking along, headed for some regular stop, and then, “Whoa! Would you look at that?” He stood there for several seconds with his whiskers twitching and his tiny front feet in the air, as the colored lights shined on his silken fur. Such a precious sight.
As soon as I put Boo down, I got out some typing paper and crayons, and made a little book for the kids—a story called “Muffy the Mouse.” It was about a mouse who came out and looked at a Christmas tree, and then climbed into a box filled with tissue paper left from an opened gift. She fell asleep in the box and next morning the kids found her. They fed her and let her live in the box, free to come and go as she pleased.
I read it to the kids first thing the next morning, and every night until spring. On the first day of spring, I told them it was a Christmas story, and we needed to put it away with the Christmas decorations and bring it out again in December. They looked so sad, I suggested a spring book, so they helped me make one about birds and we put Muffy away, only bringing her out at Christmas time after that.
Two weeks ago, we helped Boo move into his dorm room at Clemson, and yesterday, we drove to Norfolk at see Mandy off on the USS Constellation, her first assignment. Afterwards, because he knew I needed cheering up, Randal took me to the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News.
The museum has a whole wall of cubbies with glass fronts so visitors can see the animals going about the business of living. In one, there was a mother mouse, all velvety gray, lying on her side with four tiny pink babies nursing, lined up like new pencil erasers. Tears filled my eyes as I thought how, in the face of wars, diseases, pollution, and weather disasters, those nursing mice were one of the sweetest sights this world has to offer.