The Tale of Despereaux, cont.

Oh! what despair for Despereaux 6! Yes, we are on to the sixth mouse, and have released two others into the wild already.  But those mice are inconsequential, as this is is the story of a brave mouse.  Yesterday, as Sama and I were sitting around the dinner table waiting for our pizza to bake in our quasi-functional oven, Despereaux 6, the brave young mouse, ventured out into the light to behold the lonely humans of the house. . .

He scurried out from the dark closet and scaled the counter in a flash.  Noticing that the humans were startled but not angry, he continued along the counter looking for tasty morsels.  He knew that the humans considered him adorable, despite his rodentine appearance, and this gave him courage.  For a full ten minutes he scampered about touching all of the clean dishes and dirty utensils used in the preparation of the pizza which was to be the humans’ dinner for the night.  He nibbled at the floury cutting board, but the pizza dough crumbs were tasteless and sticky.  Hiding under pots and pans, he spirited away crumbs and tasty morsels the humans had left.  When the people noticed him climb into the pitcher holding the utensils they cooked with, however, they became annoyed , knowing they would have to clean all of them before cooking the next time.  But this did not perturb Despereaux, because there was a sticky spoon in there that tasted of Gallo Pinto.  The female human became anxious about the plantains left on the table, and got up to move them into a storage bin.  At this point, however, Despereaux had gained so much courage that he ventured out in front of the human and taste the plantains before her very eyes.  No more than three feet away, the female human was astonished.  She quickly picked up the bunch of plantains and deposited them in the mouse-proof bin, exclaiming, “you should set a mouse trap!” 

And so it came to pass, in a few short minutes young Despereaux found himself trapped in a rectangular metal box with two fermenting strawberries in it.  The night grew dark and cold, but the young mouse was not scared.  “Courage” he whispered to himself repeatedly, “and plus, it’s not that bad, I have strawberries!” Thus, Despereaux spent the night eating strawberries and getting drunk until morning’s light when the two humans came to release him into a new world.

That is the children’s version of the events that transpired, but the real fact is that Sama and I woke the next morning to find Despereaux laying on his back dead.  Or what appeared to be dead.  Upon closer inspection, we concluded that he was still breathing, though his breaths were shallow and belabored.  We don’t know whether he got too drunk on the fermenting strawberries we left for him, and was just unconsciously drunk, or whether he died because he ate the strawberry caps (apparently they are poisonous).  Either way, he was not in good shape, so we tossed him into the compost bin and left the lid open in case he wanted to escape if he sobered up.  When we went back later, he wasn’t there, but it looked like more compost had been tossed in and mixed up.  It still remains a mystery if we accidently killed Despereaux 6 or if we just got him drunk to the point that he woke up with a hangover in the compost bin. 

Anyway, we still have mice.

Matt