Three Blind Mice. Actually, 23 dead mice – plus one

Written September 21st, 2010

My sleep was disturbed during each of my three nights of site visit in Loumana in late July. The provenance of the derangement was two-fold. Both the voices of the people on my porch and the nocturnal shuffling of mice vitiated my slumber. I have found solutions to one of the problems.
After my visit, I knew I had to kill the mice. I am still searching for an appropriate solution to the voices. I asked my Dad to send mouse traps. He sent me 8. Today is my 21st day in village. I have killed 23 mice. 24 have died. The mousetraps, baited with peanut butter, have accounted for 21 mouse deaths. My homemade trap has raised the death-count by 2. It is a wily contraption of which I am quite proud. Used onion peels placed at one end of a cutting board, which is precariously balanced with one end over a water bucket and the other resting on the cooking table, tempt the mouse to venture out and cause the cutting board to topple into the water. I have successfully and joyfully drowned two mices. At night, the satisfaction from hearing the snap of a mousetrap is only trumped by the sound of onion peels, the cutting board, and a mouse splashing into the water below.

My efforts have killed 23 mice. A 24th has died outside of my will. It happened this morning, not even an hour ago. In fact, the death of number 24 provided the impetus of this journal entry.

I was sitting on my porch as I do every morning drinking my third cup of coffee. I was studying Djula when, immediately to my right, I heard a plop. I didn’t even have to rotate my head to see the twitching body of a mouse not two from where I sat. I did nothing but gaze at the mouse for quite some time. I was trying to process what had happened. I looked up trying to pinpoint from where the mouse fell. Where did this mouse go wrong! I stood up to align myself directly above the mouse, or more accurately the corpse, to see exactly from which perch the mouse fell. No such perch existed. Above the mouse was the bare underside of my tin roof. The death of number twenty four will remain a mystery. Perhaps it was the last surviving member of its family, and I had killed all of its brothers and sisters. Instead of meeting his end by mouse trap or teetering deathtrap, perhaps in an act of defiance, taking control of his fate, it threw itself from the underside of the tin roof proclaiming its’ dignity and declaring its freedom.

Whatever the explanation may be, it lay dead at my feet – and made my morning. If falling/jumping to its’ death wasn’t enough, a chicken was already enjoying a hearty mouse breakfast in the time it took me to retrieve my journal to document the morning’s events.