Two Mice Fell Into A Pail Of Cream

              The two mice took advantage of the garage door being left open. They both scampered under as the door was shutting. Later, as they were trying to open a box of instant mash potatoes in the overhead cupboard, they would be thrown headlong into a waiting bucket of fresh cream.  It was then, in that situation of imminent mortality, that the true difference in their characters was revealed.  

The first mouse, having examined at length the ethics and philosophy of the ancient Taoists and being accustomed primarily to a contemplative and literary mode, quickly mastered himself. After a brief struggle and a couple of spasms, he was able to peacefully drown.  Next, he was deposited onto a leaf where he grew for ten days, hatching out then as a remarkable caterpillar he munched his way through the lazy summertime.  Finally, as autumn fell, he built a cocoon and in the spring he broke free from it.  He had transformed himself into a monarch butterfly and he took place in the ecstasy that only monarch butterflies know as they fly thousands of miles across mountain ranges and over inland seas. 

            The second mouse did not benefit from the rich inner life that had so tremendously helped the first mouse. He had no education and knew no ethic other than the struggle to survive. When he fell into the bucket of cream he panicked. There is no other way to say it. He had no mentality in that situation, but his instinct took over and he began to kick and struggle with his paws and through the process of struggling to keep his nose above the surface of the frothy cream, he…as we all well know…churned the cream into butter and was thereby able to climb out of the bucket. 

           There the second mouse found himself. He was covered all over with butter on the kitchen floor of a strange house wondering what he should do next. That’s when the second mouse first noticed the cat.  Now, a cat has no ethics that he is aware of--he is not a mouse-a-tarian--he is no respecter of mice. And, he is much larger than a mouse and faster and has better agility. Also, he has claws and teeth. 

           The second mouse certainly was a mouse of ill fortune. Perhaps if he would have had the slightest bit of Greek education, he would have known that in climbing out of the bucket, he had defied the fate that the Gods had proportioned for him. It is an act of hubris to take one’s fate into his own hands. This hubris, this insolence of not dying, is what it is about mice that cats most despise and punish. Next, the cat batted the mouse around and tossed the mouse up into the air. He came down with a fat plop on the ground. Then the cat put his paw heavily on the mouse’s back and squeezed the air out of him until he lost consciousness.  A minute later the mouse regained consciousness coughing and sputtering only to find himself back in front of the cat, who was enjoying himself tremendously.  The cat then repeated this process one hundred times and each time it seemed funnier to him than the last, until, after the one hundred and first time, which was not quite as funny, the cat decided to let the mouse try to run away. When the mouse tried to drag itself to safety the cat let him go a few feet and then he stuck one claw through the end of the mouse’s tail and drug him back into the middle of the floor.  

          “Why are you doing this to me,” said the mouse.  

          “My People,” purred the cat, “Love me and are dedicated to my every comfort.  They feed me twice a day with a treat in between, and to tell the truth, I am not much hungry for a mouse at this time.  In fact, I find you quite disgusting and repulsive.  You, Mr. mouse, provide the only entertainment in what is otherwise a sanitary and boring existence. Why do you think I caused the garage door to remain open by flicking my tail underneath it? Not that I want company so much as I desire a plaything.  Besides, look at me. Look how much smarter, faster, more beautiful, and more desirable I am than you are.  You are a flea-bitten dirty infestation, and I, sir, am an adored long-haired cat of high breading. Therefore, I have the privilege of treating you and your kind in any way that I desire, according to my whim.”

          As the cat was involved in this discourse a woman entered through the front door. She walked into the kitchen and discovered the ruined pail of creamy butter. She saw the cat brutalizing the exhausted and bloodied mouse. She cursed her stupid husband who had left a bucket of cream to spoil on the kitchen floor. She screamed. The cat jumped. The woman grabbed a sticky mouse trap from the cupboard and as the mouse was trying to drag itself to safety, she stuck the trap on the mouse’s back and threw it in the waste basket. Then she fished the drowned mouse out of the pail with a spatula and threw him into the waste basket as well. Next, she took the trash out to the curb with the second mouse still barely living inside of it.  

           At this point, the second mouse understood the futility of his struggle. He was stuck fast to the trap from his tail to his head. His forelegs splayed out. A plastic milk jug ring pressed irritatingly into his scalp. He oozed blood from several wounds. To make matters worse he was forced to gaze into the beatific face of the departed first mouse, who had benefited so tremendously from his classical education and extra-biblical literacy. The departed first mouse’s face beamed with buttery joy. 

         As fate would have it, the garbage bag was black and this was a hot day. In the heat of the afternoon sun, the temperature of the garbage bag increased and the odors congealed. Those vapors, which would have been poisonous to us, were to the mouse both salutary and medicinal. It was as though he had sucked vinegar from a sponge. He started to trip like he was on acid. He opened his third eye and he felt his soul expand as one will in his dire extremity.  He came to understand that pain is the ultimate psychedelic. And as he was in this state of rapturous resignation, he didn’t notice the sun going down and the trash panda that roamed the neighborhood at that hour.  The trash panda could smell the buttery carcass of the first mouse. He chattered happily to himself as as he knocked over the trash can. He used his little hands to rip open the black plastic trash bag. He quickly discovered the buttery and delicious carcass of the first mouse and popped him into his mouth. The trash panda was truly thankful to receive the body of first mouse. He said a brief prayer of thanksgiving to the god of trash pandas. 

           Just then a raven noticed the second mouse stuck fast to the trap. He said, “Caw,” to the trash panda which startled him into a quick retreat. Then he began to poke and rip at the second mouse, but he couldn’t remove him from the sticky trap. Next, the raven began to pluck and pull at the guts of the second mouse. And soon the mouses guts were all strewn about while the raven plucked out his bloody organs. 

          “Am I to be disemboweled endlessly after the fashion of some perpetual Promethean punishment?” asked the mouse.

         Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”