The Cabin Mouse

Lucy shrieked and brandished her spoon as a mouse scurried across the cabin floor. The meat in the pot on the woodstove needed tending and her cutting board was full of half-chopped parsnips and leeks.

“Violet is going to be here at dusk!” she called to the black cat sleeping on the heavily clawed armchair. “Get up you lazy bones, and do something about that mouse!”

She returned to cooking, trying to avoid a late dinner. She wanted to impress Violet and having a mouse scampering around the cabin was unacceptable. But making their meal was running behind schedule, so there was little she could do about the mouse at the moment. Her elderly cat did not seem keen on doing his job. Lucy softened after she spoke so harshly to her feline companion. Who could blame him anyway? He was thirteen and arthritic. If he wanted to sleep, maybe he ought to.

Lucy hastily finished chopping the vegetables and threw them into the pot, along with a sprig of rosemary. She tipped a bowl of broth in after them. As she waited for it to come to a boil, she looked at the hole where the mouse had disappeared. The cat snored and Lucy crossed the room to his chair and stroked his fur.

“Sorry, Goose,” she said gently, garnering a small chirp as he woke up to acknowledge her affection. “It’s okay if you don’t want to hunt the mouse.” He began to purr. “But what shall I do about it, then?” she wondered aloud.

Goose, of course, gave no answer. He simply leaned into her hand and dug his claws into the padding of the chair and began to knead. After a few moments of distraction, Lucy remembered what her neighbor, old Mrs. Fletcher, had told her about managing the mice in her home.

“You gotta make a trap, see?” the woman had said, showing Lucy a piece of wood covered in sap. “Set this where the mouse will scamper over it. They’ll run across the sticky sap and get caught. Then they’ll run no more.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. Lucy gave Goose one final pet, promised him a portion of meat from the stew, and returned to the kitchen to check the meal. The pot was boiling and she moved it to the back of the stove to simmer. She still had to roll out the biscuit dough, but there was time to take a trip out to the woods for some sap. She knew just the tree too– a weepy pine that had lost some branches in the previous winter’s ice storm. The gashes from the lost limbs oozed thick, heavy sap, perfect for a mousetrap. She could delay her cooking a few minutes if it solved the mouse problem.

Lucy pulled on her boots and wrapped her blue shawl around her shoulders. It was early autumn, just crisp enough to need a shawl, but not cold enough to mind the numerous holes pocking the garment. The smell of autumnal rot, mushrooms and decaying leaves, reminded her that the death of winter would soon be upon the forest.

The lone pine tree stood out like a shock of dark green amid a sea of golden maples. Indeed, its wounds cried tears of sap that ran down the trunk in long threads. It looked to be in pain. Lucy peeled a shingle of bark off one of the fallen limbs and scraped the sap from the tree. In no time she’d collected a fair amount of the sticky substance and returned to the cabin.

Back inside, she used a knife to spread the sap on the bark, as if she were buttering a piece of toast. She placed a nibble of cheese in the center as bait. With a smug smile of victory, she set the trap near the mouse’s hole. Wiping her hands on a dishcloth, satisfied with her solution to the unwelcome mouse, Lucy returned to cooking the meal for Violet.

Beautiful Violet, she sighed. The fiddle player who’d captured her heart with music. She didn’t think Violet even liked other girls, let alone fancied her. Yet here she was, running behind schedule to make a romantic dinner for the most wonderful girl in the whole valley. She mixed buttermilk into flour with her spoon and formed the biscuit dough. But just as she was about to turn out the dough onto a wooden board, she heard a commotion from the mousetrap.

Sure enough, the pesky mouse had found the baited sap and become stuck. It thrashed against it, only managing to become further mired in the sticky stuff. As she approached, it began to squeal in terror. Lucy hadn’t thought this far ahead. All she’d thought about was how to catch the mouse. She had no clue what to do now that a live mouse was glued to a piece of tree bark on her kitchen floor. It was suffering, there was no doubt. She had to end its misery. She considered the options– stomping it dead, throwing it into the woodstove, drowning it in the sink. All horrible.

But then a knock at the door interrupted her gruesome contemplation. Was Violet early? Oh no! Lucy was covered in flour, the biscuits still needed to be baked, her hair was a mess, and there was a mouse stuck to sap in the kitchen. She tried to brush the flour off her apron and scrambled to think of an excuse for the chaos. But when she opened the door, it wasn’t Violet. It was someone she’d never seen before.

“Ah,” the stranger said, sniffing the air. “I smell it.” Her voice was low and dark, which matched her head-to-toe black clothes and accompanying ebony hair. She looked like a raven incarnate. Her cloak even seemed to resemble wings.

“Hello,” Lucy said uncertainly. “Can I help you?”

“Death,” the woman murmured with a strange smile. “I can smell it.”

Surely Lucy’s cooking smelled better than that. “Excuse me?”

“The mouse on your kitchen floor,” the woman said, nodding to the interior of the cabin. “How will you kill it?”

Lucy furrowed her brows, gripping the side of the door. “I’m not sure what kind of game you’re playing,” she said. “But I am very busy and must ask you to leave.”

“You wish to turn away the goddess of death?” the woman inquired, looking at her through eyes made of jet.

Stories of gods appearing to mortals in human-like forms were not uncommon. The goddess of death, frequently portrayed as a raven, had no shortage of supposed sightings. There was something eerily ethereal about the strange woman, as if she was not fully corporeal. Lucy had no reason to believe this person was not the goddess of death. What she couldn’t understand was why the goddess was here now. For a mouse?

“I don’t know how to kill it,” Lucy stammered, her throat tightening. She felt guilty for making the mouse suffer. But was it really so wrong to not want a mouse running across her floors and frightening Violet? Perhaps the goddess of death would sweep into the cabin, collect the mouse, and usher it into the afterlife without Lucy having to perform the miserable deed herself.

“You are lucky, girl,” the goddess said coldly, “that I am more merciful than you.” She pressed a hand to the door and pushed it open, letting herself into the cabin. With a relieved exhale, Lucy trailed after her.

The goddess went straight to the mouse and picked up the piece of bark, examining the little life trapped on its surface. The mouse did not squeak in fear as it had done when Lucy came near. But it was breathing heavily, exhausted from struggling against the sap.

“It was eating my grains,” Lucy said, feeling as if she owed the goddess an explanation. “My sack of oats was full of holes and spilling all over my pantry. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Killed for being hungry,” the goddess said, running a finger along its tiny body. “Such a pity.” She paused, admiring the creature. “Humans are so strange with your hierarchical views of life. At the top, the human girl you are trying to impress. In the middle, the pet cat you feed from your own plate. And at the bottom, the mouse that frightens you, the tiniest and most harmless creature of them all.” The goddess sighed. “They’re all the same to me. In death, we are all equal.”

Lucy swallowed hard, but the painful lump in her throat would not abate. Had she had a choice?

“May you pilfer away a thousand thistle seeds, and build nests thick with sheep’s wool. May your sticky fur be clean again,” the goddess prayed, giving the mouse its final rites. But just as she was about to touch the mouse’s head and end its life, Lucy stopped her.

“Wait,” she protested, “I don’t want to kill it.”

“Oh?” the goddess replied, drawing her hand away. She held out the piece of bark to Lucy, offering the mouse’s fate to her.

Lucy took the mousetrap in one hand and grabbed a tin of tallow with the other. She scooped up a small glob of fat with her fingers. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said softly to the mouse, then began to apply the tallow to the sap, rubbing it into the mouse’s fur to dissolve its sticky binds.

The mouse was too exhausted to struggle, but it looked fearful as Lucy touched its body. She wondered if it would bite her once freed, but this did not deter her. Perhaps she deserved a little bite. The goddess just watched her work with curiosity.

In no time, Lucy was able to unstick the mouse from the bark. Though it didn’t bite her, it did not run free either. It just lay defeated in her palm, its soft fur thick with sap and fat. Lucy’s job was not done yet. She took the mouse to the sink and began to rinse it off. She lathered her hand with soap and began to wash its coat.

It was difficult work, but eventually she was able to get the mouse cleaned up. Lucy was surprised at how the creature allowed her to bathe it. Perhaps it knew she was trying to help. Then she grabbed a clean kitchen towel and dried its fur, wrapping it up in a nest-like bundle. The mouse was so exhausted that it accepted the warm reprieve and didn’t run.

“It seems you didn’t need me at all,” the goddess said with a smile.

“No,” Lucy replied, “I did need you. Not to call the mouse’s soul to the afterlife, but to let it live a little longer. This is a terrifying world we live in. All we have is each other.”

“I will be going then,” the goddess said with a satisfied nod.

Lucy noticed that the sun was setting and that Violet would be there soon. Unbaked biscuits. Flour and chaos. Messy hair. A mouse in a towel. And the goddess of death casually stopping by for a visit. She smiled and ushered her unexpected guest to the door.

When she returned to the kitchen, she was surprised to see the mouse still there, curled up in its warm towel. It had regained its strength and wanted to linger with its new friend. Lucy decided she didn’t care what Violet thought of the mouse. She went to the pantry and brought a handful of oats for it to munch on, which it eagerly accepted.

Lucy didn’t feel she deserved forgiveness from the cabin mouse, but was grateful for it nonetheless. She reflected on how she’d attempted to use the pine tree’s pain to end a life.

“The world is cruel,” Lucy whispered to the mouse. “But I won’t be.”