We’re going to have to pretend that today is indeed Tuesday, since on actual Tuesday I was too busy (sort of) to fire off a blog post. But I do have a truly true story to share with you that started with a simple desire but escalated into rebellion, the keeping of dark secrets, betrayal and ending in bloodshed. Now that I have effectively hooked you in, here we go!
White mice. They’re small little white balls of cuteness! Who wouldn’t want some of them for pets? Well I did, back in my upper elementary school years. I was really entranced by the pet store white mice and they were fairly inexpensive. I asked my parents for permission to buy a couple as pets and permission was denied. By this time, I was in tight with my neighbor Sue (one year younger than me), so she asked her parents, who also said no. Undeterred by this, we transferred our mental energies to the enticing notion of buying and keeping them secretly. We discussed it in much detail and began making plans.
We still had a covered aquarium left over from when my brothers had kept mice, so I knew we’d be able to house them. But where? We settled on keeping them outdoors between Sue’s house and the house next to hers, sort of behind a bush. The fateful day arrived.
The pet store was about a mile away and we rode our bikes down there to make the purchase. This definitely had a feel of scary rebellion about it for me; I had never expressly disobeyed a clear injunction of my parents before. We were both nervous about it, but went ahead with the plan.
We bought 2-3 mice and somehow got them into their new home. We had to take turns feeding and taking care of them secretly and couldn’t do it at a time when someone might see us. It was really very nerve wracking and the longer we had them, the more I wish we’d never done it. I hadn’t read the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, but I was living my own version of it. The pressure started to get to me and by the time a neighbor noticed our skulking activities and told our parents, I was thoroughly relieved to have it out in the open.
Well, we already had the mice, so our parents couldn’t very well just ignore it. There was probably some punishment, but none so great as what actually happened once the mice became legal inhabitants. We kept the mice in our back yard; I forgot to cover the aquarium one night and Puss made short work of them. I came out in the morning to carnage and mayhem.
I hope you don’t feel that I did a “bait and switch” on you. All the elements I mentioned above reared their ugly heads in this true morality tale.
I’ll probably hide this blog post under a bush and then let it get eaten by whatever creatures eat blog posts. That would serve me right.
Lynniebeemuseoday 