I was reading this article on the BBC about some activists who dumped a dead whale outside the Japanese embassy in Berlin, when I suddenly solved a mystery which had been bothering me for a few days.
Last Sunday morning, after buying the NYTimes and a cheese puff from Nita's European deli, I returned home with the day's projects in my lazy hands. As I was putting the key in the lock, I looked down. On the floor at the edge of my doorway lay a dead mouse, one slender paw outstretched, as though it had crawled across a desert to find me, and was just reaching up to give a feeble knock when it succumbed.
There was no sign of foul play, and it looked relatively young, so I immediately ruled out both violent homicide and old age. Poison was a possibility, of course, as was witchcraft (of course). But why was it outside my door? Had it come to me for help? To warn me? Of what? I am not a mouse (technically).
It occurred to me that someone had placed the mouse there as a veiled threat of some kind. A quick glance through my Oxford Dictionary of Veiled Threats produced nothing, but it's really geared toward western culture, and there are a multitude of ethnicities and countries of origin in my building. It could take several days and several different editions to figure it out, and I just don't have that kind of initiative.
So I reluctantly turned my attention toward more fruitful pursuits, such as my cheese puff, which, come to think of it would have been very nice with some kind of fruit such as plum jam. And I forgot about my little dead visitor.
Until I read that article, and I realized all of a sudden that it was no threat at all. I've never hunted mice in my life. On the contrary, at my last place, the mice knew very well I would never kill them, and were incredibly brazen as a result. I always wondered what would happen to them if I moved out, and they had to contend with a less friendly human.
Now I know.
It's an awfully long journey from Greenpoint to Sunnyside, especially on little mouse feet. He almost made it, poor devil.
I'm going to name him Challenger. Or Columbia. Space Shuttle is too weird a name for a dead mouse.
