A Game of Hick and Mouse

Hick is no lover of mice. He has a not-quite phobia of them.

On the occasion when we would get a cute little big-eared field mouse in the house during the first cold snap, Genius was our go-to guy. He'd set the trap, the old-fashioned kind with that snappy bar, after many a sore-fingered trial, and dispose of the critter when trapping was successful. Genius, in fact, was so tender-hearted that he told me, upon one such disposal, "It wasn't quite dead yet, Mom, and I couldn't stand to kill it, so I threw it out on the front porch so the animals could get it." Yeah. I raised a real charmer.

Years ago, when Genius was an infant, and The Pony was a surprise waiting to happen, Hick and his older boys went to the BARn to clean up some junk and work on the Coca Cola loft. According to the boys, Hick grabbed their coveralls off a nail and started putting his on. He reached his hand into the pockets, and started dancing around, making a commotion, and stripped out of those coveralls forthwith.

"You should have seen him, Val," said the oldest, about 14 at the time. "He screamed like a little girl and started flapping his hands! His pockets were full of baby mice, pink, without any hair on them. He made us clean out the pockets and stomp on them."

I guess this experience stuck with Hick. We came home one evening to find him burning the yard. Yeah. Not the best plan for a house covered with cedar siding, surrounded by a wraparound wooden porch. From the look of the char, that fire had been within three feet of the porch. At that moment, the wind had shifted, and it was creeping out into the field part of the yard. The dogs and cats were laying along the burning edge.

"Get those animals away from the fire! What are they doing?"

"They're not hurtin' nothin'. A lawn grows back healthier after a burn. The conservation department does it all the time up in the state park. Watch."

Every few minutes, one of the pets pounced. They were waiting for mice to run from the fire. Hick did not seem to mind. It might have been his plan all along.

Relations weren't always so fractious between Hick and the rodents. He tells a story of his lowest moment. He had just been divorced, and was renting a ratty trailer in a park just off the highway. His mobile home overlooked the park's sewage lagoon. It was almost Christmas. He had lost his partial plate, and was depressed because he was getting ready for his factory's Christmas dinner celebration. "There I was, all alone, with only the thought of that prime rib to cheer me up, and I knew I wouldn't be able to chew it because my teeth were gone. They'd been missing for two weeks. I couldn't afford new teeth. Besides, the dinner was in a couple of hours. I sat there on the toilet with my head in my hands, feeling sorry for myself. I heard something, and looked up. There was a little hole along the baseboard. A mouse hole. And something was stuck in it. I got down and reached in, and it was my partial plate! I washed it off under the faucet, and left for the dinner. That was one of my best Christmases ever."

I guess the game of Hick and mouse is give and take.