I had just dropped off a package to a friend who lives in a large condominium complex. I knew she would not be home, and we had agreed that I would leave it inside her screen door.
I head back to my car, open the door, start the engine, and do a double-take.
Staring at me from the dashboard in front of the passenger seat is a mouse! A real live mouse! And not a small one. A furry mouse. With long whiskers I could easily make out.
“HEELLPP!” I shout as I jump out of the car leaving the door open.
I look around but no one is in sight.
“HEELLPP!”
Who to Call?
Mouse Busters?
I need someone NOW.
Peter! I had just run into him at the school where we were both teaching and he lives in this complex. He answers when I call but explains he traveled out of town right after school.
Scott! He also lives here.
He picks up the phone and asks where I am.
“I’ll head there now with my dog.”
“Scott to the rescue!” I think out loud.
Small but Mighty
I am expecting to see Scott walking toward me with a large dog, but when I first spied him approaching from a distance this was not the case. I don’t know why I would think a large dog would be a necessary companion for my hero-to-the-rescue, but I think I needed its size to match the size of my panic. And my panic was huge!
“Thank you so much for coming! Is your dog a Yorkshire terrier?” I ask when they arrive at my car.
My sister has a Yorkie and it is similar though this dog is more on the stout side.
“No,” he replies. “He’s a Norwich terrier. His name is Tuck and he is a mouser. At my family’s farm, he catches and kills rats too. If the mouse is still in your car, he’ll find it.”
Not only does this friend agree to come to my rescue but he owns a dog that catches mice! Will wonders never cease?
Scott puts the dog in my car: first in the front driver’s side, then in the back, and finally in the front passenger side. Tuck sniffs around and then becomes disinterested. Scott claims this means the mouse is no longer there.
We find mouse droppings on the dashboard, a testament to the fact that I did indeed see a mouse staring at me from there. Thanks to Covid, my alcohol-based hand wipes are always at-the-ready so I clean up and shut the doors to the car.
Now I want to trust my friend’s assessment of the creature’s exit from my vehicle though I am still afraid I will be surprised again by this unwelcome passenger.
I think about renting a car for a while. But wait. I’d be leaving the mouse to die in my car. If it indeed is still in there.
What to do?
Photo by Andrei Trishkin on Unsplash
Turn of Events
It was a blustery day and we stood for a while catching up on each other’s lives when suddenly Tuck started pulling on the leash and moving under the car.
“He smells the mouse. It must be under there,” Scott declares.
We walk around to the other side of the car where Tuck stops at the front on the driver’s side. Sitting on top of the tire under the wheel well is this admittingly cute mouse that reminded me of Gus from Disney’s Cinderella.
Scott tells Tuck, “Get it!”
Tuck moves closer. The mouse darts off the tire, disappears under the car, runs across the parking lot, and scampers away into the woods.
The doubting Thomas residing in my head was assuaged. My car was mouse-free, and Gus escaped unnecessary demise by The Mouser.
Relief was spelled T-U-C-K.
And also S-C-O-T-T.
All was well once more.
When It Smells Like a Mouse
Why did the mouse stay by the car? We had already inspected under the hood. There was no evidence of a nest and no urine smell either, so it was not trying to get back to a nest. Instinct? Just instinctively hiding while a ‘mouser’ was near?
And how did Tuck smell this mouse when it was fairly windy that day?
Instinct.
The Norwich terrier has an instinct for rodents. There is no question according to Tuck’s experienced master and now also in my experience.
Becoming More Instinctual
In a world with so much uncertainty, where so much is complicated by the mind and the emotions, the Norwich terrier reminds me to be more instinctual.
Get grounded in the body and in the senses, feel out a scenario, and sense how it makes you feel.
Tense? Or more relaxed and expansive?
This can be a simple guide to trusting your instincts.
Heart or Head
Does the head or the heart drive instinct? I would have to go with the heart.
Animals and young children can often sense when someone is safe, when he or she comes more from the wholeness of love than the separation of fear that can appear as force or control or just not being nice.
Perhaps love can be classified as an instinct, one as old as time.
You can take the person out of the Stone Age, evolutionary psychologists contend, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person.
And circumstances can take a person out of the state of love, but you can’t take the love out of the person, or at least that’s how I see it.
Some Science
According to the science of HeartMath, the heart has its own complex nervous system called the “heart brain” and the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain does to the heart. With a connection between the physical body and the emotional body, the heart is central to health and well-being.
The HeartMath Institute’s research has shown that generating sustained positive emotions facilitates a body-wide shift to a specific, scientifically measurable state. This state is termed psychophysiological coherence, because it is characterized by increased order and harmony in both our psychological (mental and emotional) and physiological (bodily) processes. Psychophysiological coherence is [a] state of optimal function. Research shows that when we activate this state, our physiological systems function more efficiently, we experience greater emotional stability, and we also have increased mental clarity and improved cognitive function. Simply stated, our body and brain work better, we feel better, and we perform better.
Coherence with optimal function for each individual is how we achieve order and harmony collectively. I would call this peace. I would know this as love.
Being More Love
Is what we think or say or do adding to being more love? If so, that could be the direction to go.
Perhaps instead of waging war with what is not love, taking small steps to move toward love each in our own simple ways could create big waves on a planet desperately in need of more peace.
This is not for the cowardly. It takes great courage to resist casting our frustrations out on others in order to tame judging, complaining, and blaming. And it takes great courage to transform that pain, which we often erroneously interpret as weakness, into strength: a strength of character, a strength of spirit, and a strength of humanity.
I have a neighbor who is not very neighborly. He is a bully actually, in a passive-aggressive way. Almost every time he behaves poorly, I get triggered. I’ve had unholy thoughts and a lot of “inner Buddha” work to do to rise above. I’ve done a lot of meditation and peace be with you and peace be with me and some ho’oponopono.
I’ve changed the way I look at the things that triggered me before. As an example, when his troubled teen who often has angry outbursts was hanging out with a couple of friends in the front yard, I switched my thinking up from fear about how he may act to an affirmation of how healthy for him to find connection. We all need connection.
I can say I’ve found my center again where I am whole and in my heart and not triggered as before. I also found the freedom to find a much more ideal place to live and the move is coming soon to a life near me, not from a place of reaction and pushing away from which is a constriction but from clarity of purpose and leading me to which is an expansion. The courage and effort to let my resentment go freed up a space to let something better come in.
On Courage
American researcher and author Brené Brown breaks courage down in the following way.
The root of the word courage is cor — the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”
Over time, this definition has changed, and today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics is important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage.
Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world that’s pretty extraordinary.
Brown also epitomizes love as follows:
Love is easy to profess and a shit ton of work to practice.
But it’s worth it.
Herein lies our superpower: an instinctual return to the heart, to love, where courage and vulnerability abide and where coherence and peace arise.
As for my mouse-capade, I am grateful to a man and a dog and a benevolent universe that answered my call and provided everything I needed. This too is love.
Read in Medium.