a tale of two rodents ·

I find it vaguely ironic that I wept for a guinea pig today, when two weeks ago the sight of a stiff, twisted, grey little scrap of fur pinned by a broken neck brought me a feeling of distinct satisfaction.

I can try to explain this in rational terms. Mice chew the telephone cords. Mice steal my border collie's food, the little miscreants, and run off to their tiny lairs with cheeks bulging. Mice leave droppings under the weathered pull-out couch...

They scamper about in the attic over my head through all hours of the night, squeaking shrilly and scrabbling their claws over the wood as they dart back and forth. They're infested with parasites, the dirty little things. They startle me half to death when they bolt across the floor while my distracted mind is focused on the television screen.

I saw her keel over on her side, today, writhing in the grass under the sun. The bulbous tumour in her distended abdomen bulged grotesquely as her clawed feet scrabbled feebly on the ground beneath her. I kneeled down in concern, reaching to stroke her coppery fur in sympathy. She flinched violently, lashed out, and blundered confusedly into the cold iron bars. I carried her inside, set her down on a carpet of pine shavings, sat back on my heels and watched her die.

Her eyes were dark and glassy; she had stiffened into a contorted position when I lifted her into a shoe-box and covered her with a shroud of tissue paper. I tied it shut with a golden ribbon. It looked like a gift. Ha, ha. I cried, silently, rocked back on my heels on the carpet with a weighty Adidas box clutched in my hands. Her lighter companion wandered naïvely about the cage in search of the other that for seven years has always been there.

It's just a guinea pig, you maudlin idiot.

I'm sorry, mouse.