Which Way ?
    by Gordon Lee

This morning as I lay in bed I heard a sound somewhere in the apartment
like paper rustling.  Reconnaisance intended to confirm this instead 
revealed that a mouse had found his way into the bathtub.  The rustling 
sounds issued from his attempts to leap up, find purchase on the plastic
shower curtain, and scale the curtain to freedom.  These attempts had 
been unsuccessful.  I left to fetch a shoe box with which to catch him
and transport him outside to the uncomfortable freedom of a chilly 
September morning.  When I had returned with the shoebox I discovered 
that the mouse had decided that my appearance had escalated the urgency 
of his escape.  Having failed to scale the curtain, he had decided to 
pursue the more unpleasant alternative of crawling down the drain.  
Only his head and forepaws had made it, his hind legs and tail flailed 
in the air.  

The prospect of a dead, rotting mouse blocking up our drain and preventing 
our morning showers weighed heavy alongside my empathy for his horrifying,
potential fate.  I caught his tail to arrest his progress.  There seemed 
to be only two alternatives, forward or backward.  Forward would represent,
for me, a large plumbing bill, and for the mouse, a watery grave in the 
Cambridge sewer system.  The mouse short-sightedly had chosen forward, 
I had chosen backward.  Mild tugs did not provide confidence that his tail 
was attached to his body much more firmly than his body was stuck in the 
drain.  Teamwork was in order, but we were not in any position to coordinate
our plans.

Sitting there holding his tail, I became overwhelmed by the dilemma of how 
to resolve the situation without violating my own sense of empathy and 
compassion for the plight of the meek and helpless.  I entertained thoughts
of becoming a vegetarian.  It occurred to me that we are all mice attempting
to scurry down the drain to hell, while God gently, painfully tugs our tail.
Should we not surrender our will in an act of loving trust to a higher 
authority ?  This reverie was short lived, as I had a problem to solve.

Since the bathtub was the freestanding, claw-footed variety, it occurred 
to me that forward would be a workable solution if I could remove 
the drain pipe from the tub and allow the mouse to scurry through 
and out the open end.  By this time, my girlfriend had come in to help,
so I asked her to hold the mouse's tail while I fetched a wrench to 
open the drain.  Alas, the pipe drain would not loosen, and I had lost
all hope when suddenly the mouse slipped free from the drain.  Sue yelped 
as she dropped him into the shoebox and closed it.  The mouse enjoyed the
chilly September morning after all.

Had the mouse surrendered to the love of God, and put his trust in Him
that the humans as His agents might rescue him ?  Or had he merely become 
tired and let go of the inside of the pipe ?  Or did he decide that death 
at our hands was preferable to the mysterious darkness that prevailed ahead ?

Somehow, he had made his choice, as do we all.  He had made his choice
in a privacy shared only with God, as do we all.