I Know, I Know

The rustlings and squeaks coming from the big medicine box on the milking room wall had made me curious so a few weeks ago I opened the drop-down door to take a peek.  I didn't write about it at the time because I felt so bad about what happened next.  The box was literally teeming with mice; I mean a lot of mice.  Mice of all sizes and they were in a panic at being discovered.  I couldn't shut the door right away because a dozen or more baby mice, fully formed but no bigger than a peanut in the shell, were in the crack and I didn't want to squish them.  As I hesitated, the tiny creatures began to fall or leap off the door to the floor.  I was able to catch a few by the tail and put them back in the box, but most scrambled away.  I felt terrible for the little kids and for their mamas.  I knew there was no way the adults could get the babies up the wall to the nest and thought the infants would never survive on their own.  I underestimated their resourcefulness and will to live.

My mother and sister (both terrified of mice) would call me six kinds of idiot to hear me say that I have been so happy in the last week to see the kindergartners come to get spilled goat chow for breakfast.  The waifs, now half the size of a walnut, have made their own colony burrowed in the used-wipe bucket, running up and down the section of broom handle I put in there to allow the wayward to escape.  I hope I'm not spawning a gang of hooligans, as this group will grow up without adult supervision to keep them in line.  They don't have much fear of me and will sit and munch on a corn kernel as I move about.  Five or six at a time will come out of the bucket to play hide-and-seek behind the shovel and rake.  Their antics make me smile and sometimes laugh out loud.

I know.  I know that mice are considered vermin.  I know they can be destructive.  I know they are costly in terms of grain wasted.  I know they are prey to cats and hawks or that I will find the corpse of one who zigged when it should have zagged in the goats' stall.  I know the chickens find them to be a delicacy.  I know all that, and I don't care.  I find mice amusing companions while I tend my farm animals.  Live and let live, I say.