"Scream or Ignore - The Choice is Yours"

January 10, 2011

I had a very busy weekend – our son received his Parvuli Dei Catholic Scouting Emblem at mass on Saturday, we had a family dinner Saturday night, a school post-holiday party for me, more mass on Sunday, and finally a church choir Epiphany party Sunday afternoon.  All wonderful events full of joy.  But there was one thing that happened that stood out and immediately I realized must be the theme for today’s blog post.

Today’s Bit of Advice….

“Scream or ignore – The choice is yours”

Sounds quite intense, doesn’t it?  On Saturday night, our family (including grandparents and an aunt) went to dinner together at the Chinese Buffet to celebrate the Scouting Emblem presentation.  We were having a lovely meal, enjoying our Wonton Soup and Eggrolls, when our middle child let out a scream.  A muted scream, but a scream none the less.  All eyes went to her panicked expression as she continued to screech and point.  “A mouse!” she yelled.  “A mouse just ran across the floor and under that table over there”.  She happens to be a very alert child with excellent observation skills so of course she would be the one to notice this event.  We worked quickly to quiet her down lest the other diners notice the rodent in their midst. An employee realized the problem and worked to remove the mouse from under the table but had no luck.  It appeared he planned to stay right there in safety.

Throughout the meal, however, the mouse decided to change locations.  Have I mentioned yet that I am terrified of mice?   I don’t mind spiders, snakes, insects and the like but mice are my downfall.  As the mouse continued to move through the dining room I had to make the choice about how to handle my own terror.  Would I allow myself to scream as my daughter was doing or would I try to ignore the nasty rodent?  The choice was mine.  It wasn’t easy but I tried to keep my eyes on the people around me and not on the floor areas.  I kept my feet up on the rungs of the chair just in case and went on with my meal.  Because it was a buffet I did have to get up a few times to get more food or take a child to fill a new plate.  I simply looked high and prayed nothing would run under my feet.  A few minutes before we finished our meal, the staff was able to corner the mouse, grab him, and remove him from the dining room.  Phew! 

I wish this was the only mouse experience in my lifetime that related to this bit of advice but no.  When my husband and I were dating I used to travel to Buffalo to visit him.  Usually I took the Amtrak train out of Albany – about a five hour trip to Buffalo.  The train is a nice way to travel.   If you sit on the correct side of the train car you get a lovely view of the Mohawk River and Valley.   The seats were reasonable comfortable and the fellow passengers mostly pleasant.  I would bring a few magazines to read and enjoy the trip.  Except for the time when…….. Have you figured out what comes next here?  Yup.  There was a mouse in the train car.  It ran along the side wall of the car next to my seat and then to seat in front of me.  YIKES!  I had to make the choice to scream (which is what I desperately wanted to do) or try to ignore.  I was likely to spend the next three hours in the company of the rodent but screaming seemed to be a recipe for mass panic so I chose to pick my feet up off the floor, sit as close to the aisle as possible, and stay vigilantly alert (ready to whack the little bugger away with my magazine if necessary).

My mother had a scream or ignore incident with a mouse when she was a younger woman too.  In her case, she chose “scream” (or something like a quiet screaming yelp) – you’ll see why.   She lived on a dairy farm and helped daily with the chores.  One afternoon she was in the straw mow putting bales of straw down the chute into the lower parts of the barn to use for bedding.  Her mother was in the barn doing chores as well.  As my mother was working, her arm bumped against the side of her leg and she felt a wad of tissues in her pocket.  Except then the wad of tissues moved and she realized it was not a wad of tissues at all.  It was a mouse that had gotten into her pant leg and was now stuck insider her pants near her pockets.  She chose “scream” and I think I would have done the same! 

What do you do when you have a mouse in your pants?  How do you get it out of there?  Do you take your pants off and pull the mouse out from the top?  Because she didn’t know what to do, and was a bit panicked, she did the first thing that came to mind.  She scream/yelped/called for her mother to come and help her.  Her mother, my grandmother, ran in to see what the screaming was about.  She quickly assessed the problem and provided her wisest solution.  “Wait until I get a cat”, she stated.  Because on a farm, free cat food is a bargain.  You don’t waste a mouse.  So my poor mother stood there with a wriggly mouse in her pants until her mother could grab a barn cat and haul it up to the straw mow.  Eventually they got the mouse out, the cat got its dinner, and my mother could stop her screaming/yelping.

In every mouse event there is a proper decision to make as whether to scream or ignore.  Depends on how many other people are around and they type of chaos screaming will create.  There are many other situations that cause us to make the same type of decision – do you react with panic or try to ignore your inner fears?  Have you been in this situation?  What did you do?

Hope you enjoyed the read.