Of Mice and Men

Recently Keith was searching for something under the guest bed in the spare room, when he suddenly called to me "We've got a mouse in here!" A mouse? I was shocked. We live in a neighborhood in a city, we're not supposed to get mice, right?
Expressing this sentiment provided Keith with yet another opportunity to poke fun at the different sides of town we grew up on. When Keith lived in Tucson growing up, it was in the neighborhood we're currently living in - on the south east side of Tucson. I grew up on the northwest side - the nice side of town. Not quite to Oro Valley (the nicer side of town) and definitely not the foothills (the really rich part of Tucson), but definitely nicer than most everything south of us. Anytime I mention an item or experience from my childhood that Keith doesn’t relate to, he explains it by saying "We couldn’t afford that kind of thing on my side of town." He enjoys this type of teasing merely because I highly resent the implication that I am a snob or excessive. On the contrary, my personality type prides myself in practicality and being a good old-fashioned cheapskate. (You taught me well, Dad.) When Keith and I met, he was highly into brand names and wanting the best of the best in everything. Excessiveness under the guise of quality. I, on the other hand, would lean way to the other side where I would buy something so cheap, for "practicality," that I would probably have to replace it 10 times as often as something of slight more expense.

So back to the story at hand - Apparently mice do occasionally trickle into some neighborhoods in Tucson. And one miraculously made it past the abounding number of neighborhood cats that like to sleep in our yard and got into our house. I decided to catch it. So we tore apart the room looking for it. No where to be found. Next day it's under the kitchen sink. We think we have it trapped, but pull everything out to find its not there. Next day we see it behind the aquarium, and chase it into the back room, with Elliot's room and our room carefully blockaded from mouse entrance. Tear it apart again, but still don’t find it. We finally gave up and went back into our bedroom. Keith's getting ready for bed and says to me "I'll be fine as long as nothing crawls over me in the middle of the ni-AHHHHH!" Yup - the mouse had made it into our bedroom closet, and ran across Keith's feet right in the middle of his ironic self-assuring statement. "That's it Shawna - you need to go buy a trap tomorrow!"

I know to most people, mice are disgusting little creatures. But I still see them as little lives. I've always been highly sensitive to the sanctity of life. Any life. (Excluding cockroaches and mosquitoes, which everyone knows aren't really lives, but spawn of satan in insect form.) When I was little, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours because none of adults seemed to care that my brother was outside maliciously killing ants on purpose! Before the days when Joel and I were given weeding to do as a chore, I used to pull up occasional weeds by the roots and plant them somewhere else or in pots in my room so my Dad wouldn’t kill them with his weed sprayer. I remember watching a Harrison Ford movie in the theater (Patriot Games?) and crying because of the numerous amounts of no-named bad guys getting shot and killed. They were people too - with parents and possibly a wife and children at home who were now going to be fatherless. Didn't anyone understand the magnitude of snuffing out a life? And finally, once in my Uncle Art's house, I reached down without a thought and snatched up a mouse that was running across the floor, because I knew he had mouse traps set up around the house. My Mom is an amazing woman to put up with me bringing that mouse into the house and keeping it as a pet.

So I went out and got a mouse trap. A mouse trap that consisted of a little plastic box with a swinging door that could only be pushed open by the outside. I humane mouse trap. I baited it and even rubbed peanut butter on the outside of the door to attract it by scent like it suggested. A few days went by. No mouse. So I gave in and let Keith set up the other kind of trap. The head squishing kind. We set it right next to my humane trap - I'm still hoping the mouse chooses mine. We set it up and were in the living room talking when, probably not even an hour later, *snap!* Keith and I look at each other wide eyed. I'm horrified. Keith goes to check the trap. "It was probably a cockroach that set it off," I say to assure myself that I did not just participate in the killing of a little life. Nope. It was the mouse. Keith tells me not to look and a few minutes later he asks where I keep the bleach. My brain gets a little warm with emotion, and as a byproduct my eyes get a little sweaty. "I feel rotten!" I announce. Keith looks at me and laughs. Not a mean laugh, but I understand its somewhat funny that I'm so worked up about it. I laugh too, but at the same time I'm shouting "It's not funny! That was a little life! Haven't you seen Cinderella? That could have been Gus-Gus!"

So there it is. I can be an overly sensitive girly-girl who cries over a mouse. During high school and college, I managed to completely callous over this sensitivity to points where I honestly didn’t feel anything towards things that I should. But in the end I still have it in me. The extremist who doesn’t give a rip about some people's problems that I don't think are important enough for them to get all upset about - but who can go into depression for days because of a stranger's pain over something I find of infinite value. I believe we shouldn't become desensitized to the sanctity of life. I believe Life is of infinite value.