Member-only story
The Little Visitor
The mouse who came to stay.
“A mouse does not rely on just one hole.” — Plautus
When a random visitor wanders in, finds a comfortable place to hide, helps themselves to food, it’s time to make a decision. They have to go.
Lots of people ask me if I am Buddhist because I just find it totally impossible to harm animals. I’m not, I am vegan, and any form of animal cruelty or abuse is utterly foreign to me. I’m the one in the family who will take a cockroach out into the garden and reassign spiders to other homes, so when I saw a little field mouse run into the house, the last thing I thought of doing was setting a killing/maiming trap.
I was sitting on the deck, minding my own business and having a morning coffee when I saw this cute little mouse come from behind the broom that’s up against the wall and duck inside.
I named her Millie. Of course, she could have been a Mickey, but I liked to think she was a spunky little girl. So Millie took up residence behind the fridge. She was exceptionally clean, never saw any sign that she was even in the house; in fact, I thought she’d gone back outside. However, the clue that she was still there were all the little dog biscuits that I saw along the side of the fridge.
