a requiem

[jackdawdle]

just killed a mouse in my apartment with a five iron.

for a couple of days now my kitchen table was littered with mouse turds, tiny little pellets resembling black sesame seeds.

fed up i had bought a couple mouse traps and i was setting them up, baiting them with peanut butter, when i heard a rustling in the kitchen trash bin.

the fool had got in there and was trapped. it kept trying to climb out only to slip and fall back in. lacking any blunt object but my golf club, i covered the blade with a plastic bag and brought it down on the mouse with enough force to paralyse it. a second blow caused it to convulse and eventually die.

that was very satisfying.

[Irene Wilde]

just killed a mouse in my apartment with a five iron.

for a couple of days now my kitchen table was littered with mouse turds, tiny little pellets resembling black sesame seeds.

fed up i had bought a couple mouse traps and i was setting them up, baiting them with peanut butter, when i heard a rustling in the kitchen trash bin.

the fool had got in there and was trapped. it kept trying to climb out only to slip and fall back in. lacking any blunt object but my golf club, i covered the blade with a plastic bag and brought it down on the mouse with enough force to paralyse it. a second blow caused it to convulse and eventually die.

that was very satisfying.

RIP little mousy. You were only doing what mice do.

Remind me not to eat at Jack's house.

[titania7]

just killed a mouse in my apartment with a five iron.

for a couple of days now my kitchen table was littered with mouse turds, tiny little pellets resembling black sesame seeds.

fed up i had bought a couple mouse traps and i was setting them up, baiting them with peanut butter, when i heard a rustling in the kitchen trash bin.

the fool had got in there and was trapped. it kept trying to climb out only to slip and fall back in. lacking any blunt object but my golf club, i covered the blade with a plastic bag and brought it down on the mouse with enough force to paralyse it. a second blow caused it to convulse and eventually die.

that was very satisfying.

Jackdawdle,
We have a mouse that lives in our garage. He's a cute little fella, too, with short, silky whiskers and tiny paws. I couldn't bear to kill him! I would only get a mouse trap if Modigliani (that's the mouse's name) decided to bring some friends over to live with him. Obviously, I'm not trying to open a Mouse Motel . I suspect Modigliani was attracted by some birdseed I was keeping out in the garage in a storage bin. I also had stored a bag of oatmeal out there. When the mouse first appeared, I nearly had a heart attack! It was just so completely unexpected, though my grandmum had warned me that keeping birdseed in the garage would attract rats. My mum's first reaction upon hearing of the rodent's existence was, "How large was the animal? Was its tail straight? Are you sure it wasn't a (her voice dropped to a whisper) r-a-t?" Needless to say, I now store the birdseed in the trunk of the car, and I'm not going to put any more oatmeal out in the garage, either.

I'm reminded of a tale that one of my music teachers once told me about a rat in her kitchen. "The incredible thing about it, darling," she said, "was that the little animal was actually eating a piece of cheese!" She called anyone she was fond of darling, lest you wonder. She was Hungarian and very colorful--my music teacher, that is.

It seems you aren't quite as compassionate as I am, Jack. I would actually feel terrible about having to kill a mouse, especially a mouse that I call by name, such as Modigliani. But it looks as if you did a good job of clearing out your mice, at any rate.
Congratulations!

~Titania

[Eric]

Of Mice and Garages

I'm with Titania on this one. In the autumn of 2004, 2005 and 2007, with a curious lapse of one year, I too housed a wild mouse in the garage.

The first time I saw the mouse, I thought: damn, vermin. But as I had let a pet rat die a decade before (I'll tell this true story one day), I felt a certain guilt towards the rodent classes. So I bought a catch-'em, not kill-'em trap, and tried and tried and tried to catch the thing. With bait, a falling shutter door, etc. No luck.

So I took a simple, and exceedingly crafty, decision: feed it. I have boxes of books in that garage. I was afraid it would get the nibbles, as indeed it did when I once left cloths with cooking grease in the garage. So, a decent diet was the only solution.

I taught the mouse mutual respect. This was not a pregnant mum, waiting to spread her litter of thousands all over my garage. But a field mouse; a loner. Now, when you shift a box and see two little half-blind and bulbous black-pupilled eyes, staring out of a little black face, you simply cannot kill - unless you're a psychopath, of course.

I found a silver foil bowl (the bottom from some pre-cooked pie) and every day filled it with suitable mousey food: cherry tomatoes, cracker crumbs, peas, etc. The thing I soon learnt was the gratitude of the creature. It ate the food, shat dry odourless pellets, but never once touched any of my books.

I do not recommend this, unless the garage is hermetically sealed from the rest of the house by concrete. But it worked well, for three winters. The mouse tended to arrive in October, leave in April.

I'm hoping it'll come back this winter; it is late. Mice do not, however, live forever, and there are many cats in my area. But fieldmice are not rats!

[cwec03]

I assume that you recited the wee mouse this verse before his final death blows.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

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!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

[Irene Wilde]

I suspect Modigliani was attracted by some birdseed I was keeping out in the garage in a storage bin.

You named your mouse Modigliani. I'll be smiling all night over that one.

[nnyhav]

a co-incident: Stochastic Bookmark: mo' uses of literature

[kpjayan]

Titania , you may want to make your contributions here..

Temple of Rats

Personally, I'm with Jack.. wouldn't it be easier to leave the mouse-trap, in a bucket of water .

[kpjayan]

a co-incident: Stochastic Bookmark: mo' uses of literature

Is your little fella , a re-incarnation of this ?

Amazon.com: Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife: Sam Savage, Michael Mikolowski: Books

This book is in my TBR.

[Sybarite]

Did the grim squeaker arrive to spirit away the mouse's soul?

[jackdawdle]

there was a moment of regret after the first blow when the mouse looked up and squeaked and squealed.

i could've sworn it said "spare me, spare me".

i was having none of it though. heck i would've raised a pet snake if it came to that. incidentally my favorite movie line is tom green's "unleash the fury!, unleash the fury!"

[titania7]

Is your little fella , a re-incarnation of this ?

Amazon.com: Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife: Sam Savage, Michael Mikolowski: Books

This book is in my TBR.

Jayan,
I'm not sure who Modigliani is a reincarnation of! I haven't yet spotted him with a palette and paintbrushes; thus, he presumably isn't the reincarnation of his namesake .

However, I do know I'm going to add Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife to my TBR stack, too. In fact, it's going to be included right away on my Amazon wish list. All those five-star reviews! Who can resist?? I particularly liked the review entitled "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Rat."

~Titania

[Eric]

From what I understand, #5 is a translation. Rabbi Burns wrote the poem in Yiddish originally, then Irvine Welsh decided to translate it into Doric, so that only a select band of Scots people (excluding the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders) would understand.

No Grim Squeaker is coming to reap the soul of my fieldmouse. I forgot to mention that during a downpour in July of this year, the mouse (or a mouse) returned to my garage. I looked him in the eye (literally) and told him that this was summer, and maybe he should wait a while. He disappeared the next day. If all field creatures were so decent and understanding, people wouldn't have to bludgeon them to death.

This is not Beatrice Potter, but life in my garage.

[cwec03]

I was under the impression that the famous lines:

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,

were based on a yiddish proverb, but that the poem was written as posted. Though I don't know much about Burns' work.

[Stewart]

From what I understand, #5 is a translation. Rabbi Burns wrote the poem in Yiddish originally, then Irvine Welsh decided to translate it into Doric, so that only a select band of Scots people (excluding the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders) would understand.

You're far off the mark there. Burns wrote in Scots, pretty much the language du jour for him, and To A Mouse appears as written. The Yiddish proverb, whether Burns knew it or not, is something like "Man proposes, God disposes."

Since Burns was a farmer, when not chasing the lassies, the poem is inspired by turning over the crops and finding the mouse there, panicked.

[jackdawdle]

speaking of modigliani, titania7, i was at his show several years ago. those long elongated faces-- funny that he had an affinity for them considering that his own face was rather broad.

if anyone was the grim squeaker in this drama, sybarite, then that was me with my five iron.

and cwec03 this is a poem which won first prize in a contest i entered many years ago. if only i had written it, alas.

bug-eyed rats
by jean camou

we lie basking on our backs
in the palms of their cupped
hands -- saucy and sequacious
our little almond-curved
squints blink mist.

we crawl on our bellies through
their crannies and crevices -- a
hank of hair caught piously
fluttering the cold torn cracks.

we beg! squealing as though we
are in need of oiling and run to
their imagined-thrown scraps of
meat and pretend to chew and
swallow it, and we think we must
suddenly be there where they leash
us into fascination of their
scary pea-diddle minds.

[Eric]

Stewart: it is unfortunate that the name Rabbi Burns became the distorted "Rabbie Burns" owing to a most unfortunate inaccuracy of spelling. This led to the erroneous impression that Burns was not one that promoted the Jewish religion. Another totally wrong perception is that what the Hebrews in the Old Testament called "ha-gis" ("ha" being the definite article in Hebrew; the word "gis" obscure) was a Scotch invention, when in fact the word presumably originated in Ancient Israel. They must have had loads of dead sheeps' stomachs in the Negev. Rather a dry place; mortality. Other sheep's stomachs were used for what the Hebrews termed doodle-sacks. A marvellous invention for a desert race.

"Lassies", is no doubt another distortion of a Hebrew plural, where the "t" of Hebrew tends to change to "s" in Yiddish, a rendering of the Gaelic word we know as "colleen" in its more Irish guise. So our resident Hebrew expert could perhaps explain for the rest of us what "lassit" actually means in Hebrew.

Etymology exposes the underbelly of provenance.

[titania7]

Of Mice and Garages

I'm with Titania on this one. In the autumn of 2004, 2005 and 2007, with a curious lapse of one year, I too housed a wild mouse in the garage.

I taught the mouse mutual respect.

Eric,
I admire the classy way in which you behaved towards your visiting rodent. I'm sure he appreciated your taking an interest in his health by enabling him to maintain a proper program of nutrition, and providing him a shelter from the untoward weather conditions by allowing him to be
your mouse-in-residence .

This was not a pregnant mum, waiting to spread her litter of thousands all over my garage. But a field mouse; a loner. Now, when you shift a box and see two little half-blind and bulbous black-pupilled eyes, staring out of a little black face, you simply cannot kill - unless you're a psychopath, of course.

He sounds adorable, actually. He may have been an even more fetching critter than Modigliani is!

And I agree with you about it being nearly impossible to kill such an innocent, helpless little animal (sorry, Jackdawdle ).

I found a silver foil bowl (the bottom from some pre-cooked pie) and every day filled it with suitable mousey food: cherry tomatoes, cracker crumbs, peas, etc. The thing I soon learnt was the gratitude of the creature. It ate the food, shat dry odourless pellets, but never once touched any of my books.

Mutual respect, eh? Modigliani hasn't bothered any of our books, either, and we have several boxes of them in our garage. I think he enjoys the birdseed, for the most part. I found some sunflower seed husks in the corner earlier this week. Modigliani, in spite of the artistic name, doesn't seem to be interested in culture very much. I suspect that books don't interest him as much as seeds and grains (such as oatmeal) do.
Though who knows? One of these days I could actually catch him
reading some Muriel Spark, Margaret Drabble, Anthony Burgess, or Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., on the sly . (Those are at least a few of the authors whose books I know I have stored in the boxes in the garage).

I'm hoping it'll come back this winter; it is late.

I believe Modigliani made his first appearance in September.

Mice do not, however, live forever, and there are many cats in my area.

We have a big, plump, grey cat around here, too, belonging to our next-door neighbour. This cat has eyes that glow in the dark, and I suspect it wouldn't think twice about devouring a lit'l old mouse (or any other kind of rodent, for that matter, including chipmunks). I suppose hawks could prey upon mice, too, and we have a few of those. They are beautiful and majestic birds, however. Very regal.

But in spite of predators, Modigliani appears to be thriving--at least, so I assume from all the empty sunflower seed husks in various parts of the garage.

I hope your mouse will pop up, Eric. Just keep your eyes open....and
be on the lookout for a pair of short whiskers .

Cheers,
Titania

[nnyhav]

In 1937 Ivanov was arrested.

Once again he was subjected to a long interrogation and then they left him in a dark cell and forgot about him. His interrogator didn't know a thing about literature. His principal interest was finding out whether Ivanov had met with members of the Trotskyite opposition.

During the time in the cell, Ivanov made friends with a rat he called Nikita. At night, when the rat came out, Ivanov had long conversations with her. As one might imagine, they didn't talk about literature, and certainly not about politics, but about their respective childhoods. Ivanov told the rat about his mother, who was often in his thoughts, and his siblings, but he avoided talking about his father. The rat, whose Russian was scarcely a whisper, talked in turn about the Moscow sewers and the sky in the sewers, where because of the blossoming of certain debris or an inexplicable phosphorescent process, there were always stars. She also talked to him about her mother's warmth and her sisters' foolish capers, how she had laughed at those capers, even now as she remembered them they brought a smile to her narrow rat's face. Sometimes Ivanov let himself succumb to despair and he rested his cheek on his palm and asked Nikita what would become of them.

Then the rat looked at him with sad, perplexed eyes and her look told Ivanov that she was even more innocent than he was. A week after he had been locked in the cell (although for Ivanov it seemed like more than a year) he was interrogated again and no one had to hit him to make him sign various papers and documents. He wasn't returned to his cell. They took him straight out into the courtyard where he was shot in the back of the head and his body tossed on the bed of a truck.

Roberto Bola?o, 2666 (trans Natasha Wimmer)

[jackdawdle]

sigh nnyhav. now you've got me thinking about my karma.