LIVING WITH SNAKES AND MICE
I didn't freak out when my grandson Ryan's pet snake got loose in my car and hid in the door. We saw him slither along the window, and then back inside the doorframe, and we hadn't the faintest idea how to get him out. Snakes can live a month, I've been told, without food or water. They live on glue, or something. Anyhow, he last slithered two weeks ago, and as far as I know, he's still alive in there.
Ryan's mother hatched a plan to get him out. She bought a feeder mouse at the pet store, putting the mouse box on the front seat of the car to coax the snake out of the door. He'd been unfed for two weeks so we expected him to rush right out of the door, wind himself around the mouse house, and stay there drooling till we caught him.
But it got cold that night, and when the snake didn't appear, Ryan said, "That poor little mouse is going to freeze to death." So nothing would do but that Ryan go out and bring the poor little mouse inside where he wouldn't freeze, and where we could see how friendly he was, and feed him, and let him run up and down our shirt sleeves while we squealed, "Oh, how cute!"
The following night when I came home from work, Ryan met me at the door with apologies. "I'm really sorry, Grandma. It was an accident. I didn't mean to let the mouse loose in the house!"
I got a little loud. Yes, I may have even shouted, and some of the things I said weren't very nice. We didn't know if the mouse was a boy or girl, and girl mice have been known to replenish the earth single-handedly in six days.
But Grandpa didn't have to take his dinner plate into his den to eat. When I followed him in there to see why he didn't eat at the table with the rest of us, he snorted, "If there's going to be a tornado, I'll ride it out in the storm cellar."
I thought about mousetraps and poison, but could you poison a mouse who has run up and down your shirt and looked at you with big innocent eyes? I mean, this wasn't any ordinary little run-of-the-attic dirty brown house mouse. This mouse was tan and white, and his (her?) nose twitched sweetly, and you could almost believe that she would never crawl into the walls and chew holes in the plaster and have babies, no matter what. Promise!
And the snake was still in the car.
We finally decided against mouse traps and poisons or anything else that would harm that pretty little mouse, but we couldn't quite figure out how to let Lucy or Molly, our cats, know about our decision. None of us talk Cat very well. Grandpa talks Cat the best (when he hasn't locked himself in his den). When he says "Meow, meow," to Lucy, she always says "Meow, meow" back to him. Of course, we don't know exactly how much they understand each other, or what kind of messages they're passing back and forth. But Lucy is so old, if the mouse walked in front of her nose, she'd probably just raise her head, twitch her whiskers, and go back to sleep.
Molly is a different story. She is a mighty huntress. She has been known to catch two birds and two field mice in the same day. She sneaks them into the house and deposits them on my pillow in the bedroom so I can admire them. I think it gives her some kind of vicarious thrill when I run shrieking from the bedroom.
Needless to say, I don't talk to Molly, and she doesn't listen when Grandpa talks to her. She just sticks her tail up in the air, and flips it back and forth to show her displeasure, and goes right back out into the yard to hunt some more.
I knew right away if a tiny tan and white mouse appeared on my pillow, it wasn't going to be only me that ran shrieking from the room. Ryan announced that Tanny was his pet and the snake could take care of himself. He also threatened Molly with grievous bodily injury if she even looked at his mouse.
We were all on edge. The snake could not be found; Molly prowled the house instead of going outside to hunt. I checked the food cupboards for evidence that Tanny had been there; and when I went to bed at night, I listened for scratches in the walls. Something had to give, and I was afraid it was going to be me.
On Sunday morning, I got up, read the morning newspaper, and then went to make some coffee. The coffee can lid was askew, a fact that I barely acknowledged, but I reached in with the coffee scoop and scooped out a quivering little bare-naked pink baby mouse, hardly bigger than a thimble. I screamed, and a tan-and-white mama mouse stood up on her little hind legs and stared at me. She bared her teeth in what I think was a growl until, in fright, I dropped the baby mouseling back into the coffee can.
At that point, Mama huddled down over the nest of mice, kind of like a hen on chickens. Poor little Tanny Mama. She was shaking like a leaf, but she wasn't about to abandon her babies for her own safety. You have to admire a mouse that will stand her ground to defend her babies, even if a bed of coffee grounds doesn't seem like the safest place to give birth. On second thought, maybe it was. The cats never drink coffee this early in the morning.
So, we've installed the mice (mother and babies) in a nice cat-proof cage from the pet store, along with their very own food and water. There are eight little pink naked-looking mouse babies, and the cage isn't going to be big enough for them forever, but we'll deal with that when the time comes. Molly spends a lot of time lurking about the cage, thinking dastardly thoughts, but Lucy ignores the whole thing. If we have to, I guess Ryan and I will defend those little pet mice to the death. I learned all about courage from Tanny-Mama.
Oh, yes, and we had a memorial service for the snake. He probably vacated the car and set up housekeeping in the garden by now, but we may never know for sure.
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