Mouse Funeral

the youngest tries desperately to reanimate the poor critter with water

It's not easy having three kids under six. Luckily I was just the babysitter--and the very tired babysitter by the middle of the third day.

On Friday afternoon the sun was blazing and the weather was georgous. I dragged all of the kids outside in the courtyard for a water gun fight and some impromptu horseplay. "Get out and blow some stink off of you!" I said, sounding eerily like my mother. We put on some music and they had a great time dancing around to American Indian drums and chants, shooting each other mercilessly all the while with their Super Power Blaster guns, as I sat contently with baby S in the shade for a few moments and relaxed.

After about twenty minutes the oldest of Bea's boys came running up and grabbed me excitedly by the arm, "come here...look!" They had discovered the decapitated remains of a little, brown mouse that Nilla the cat had neatly layed out by the garden hose. Lots of animated questions came pouring forth, especially from the mouth of Bea's youngest boy, age four. "Is it still going to be okay?" "Can he grow a new head?" "Does he have any brothers that need to know where he is?" And finally, "what does it mean to be dead...where do you go?" I carefully answered all of the questions as best as I could, and for the last two I simply said "it means he's gone somewhere else interesting and maybe we'll see him again one day." They seemed to accept all of my answers, except that the little one looked perplexed and seemed to have a problem organizing all this new information. He kept pouring water on the mouse carcass and would run back to tell me "come look...he moved his tail!" and, "come look he breathe-ded again!" I told him I was really not sure if he could save the mouse but that his efforts were valiant. And I added, "I think it's time for his funeral."

So on Friday afternoon we staged a mouse funeral, picking him up carefully with laurier leaves and delivering him into a neatly dug hole. We placed rocks on top of his grave, Celtic style and said a short word about what we thought about garden mouses in general. "He was the best mouse in da world," the youngest added very seriously.

If his mouse family was watching from behind a garden rock I'm sure they were impressed with the poetic ending of their mouse brother's life. A lovely finish any garden mouse would be envious of.

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