Ender’s Game

I think every mouse that enters Adam’s and my house feels a bit like Ender at battle school. The odds are forever stacked against you, the rules constantly are changing, and there is nobody to help. It is meant to test and entrench Ender’s destiny by putting him against unbeatable odds. And yet Ender always tops the impossible odds.

The mice that enter our battle school receive the rules we lay down, and we’re as brutal as any commanders. The mice do not win.

One recent Sunday afternoon, Adam and I were relaxing in our main room, when I heard a plastic bag moving behind me. So we investigated, and discovered an intruder. A mouse. This little bugger was small, which meant he hid easily. It was a problem. So we began clearing any obstacles out of our way in an attempt to flush him into the open. He was crafty. But eventually we managed to flush him, whence began a five minute scuffle of our efforts to ensnare the mouse, while the mouse frantically tried to evade our traps. Finally captured, we schemed how to dispose of it.

We couldn’t just let it go. It would return to the house. The cat is afraid of entering the house, so we couldn’t feed her, try as we might. The only option was to take it outside and kill it. But how? We settled upon the act of drowning. However, while the transferring it to the drowning container (this transfer occurred outside), the mouse managed a preposterous escape.

Immediate action was required.  So I snatched up the nearest blunt object; a discarded metal lid. Racing away from a sure death, the mouse made its fatal error- rather than running as far as possible, it tried to dodge through our bamboo fence. But this cost it precious time. I slammed the lid over it in capture. From this point I shall simply state that the mouse met a not so graceful end. No longer shall that mouse participate in battle school. It has been sent back to the earth from which it came.

Here's a picture. A few more randoms from life in Nametil are also on flickr.