Out for a morning walk with my pit bull dog, the two of us walked into a woman looking down and a little friend of hers there, brown and still and very small. It was an adolescent mouse, not too big and not too small with his round back very still there in the middle of the sidewalk. He wasn't moving and we both spoke about how he might in fact be dying.
The city is overrun with rodents now worse than ever or so it seems. They squeak around and do some not nice scary running, creeping in my neighbors bed for one thing and scaring me by scurrying around so if you live in a brownstone and don't have a cat, you're likely having visitors. You've likely had uninvited visitors since the cold winter where they look for food and shelter like every other critter.
We suggested that the little critter might make his move because someone walking by would probably step on him and the hard concrete is a very undignified way for any living animal to leave this world.
The neighbor, a lovely and mature Latina said she hated it when she saw animals sick or dying. We both felt the same way. She pointed to the fact that she even went so far as to share a piece of the apple her friend had given her. She shared a chunk of apple with the small mouse. He stood there not moving and she said that he was eating it.
Finally, and with the both of us feeling sorry for the little mouse - she spoke to him and suggested he move over to the nearby garden and not in a hurry and not entirely slow either, he managed his way over to the garden, believe it or not, as if he understood the necessity to do so.
He left his chunk of apple behind him which my neighbor quickly picked up and placed near him in the garden. By necessity, we left him in the garden on this beautiful spring day to make his way. To make it and go on or to end his days which may have come to an end with the possibility of a stomach somewhat filled with a friendly neighbor's apple.
The city is overrun with rodents now worse than ever or so it seems. They squeak around and do some not nice scary running, creeping in my neighbors bed for one thing and scaring me by scurrying around so if you live in a brownstone and don't have a cat, you're likely having visitors. You've likely had uninvited visitors since the cold winter where they look for food and shelter like every other critter.
We suggested that the little critter might make his move because someone walking by would probably step on him and the hard concrete is a very undignified way for any living animal to leave this world.
The neighbor, a lovely and mature Latina said she hated it when she saw animals sick or dying. We both felt the same way. She pointed to the fact that she even went so far as to share a piece of the apple her friend had given her. She shared a chunk of apple with the small mouse. He stood there not moving and she said that he was eating it.
Finally, and with the both of us feeling sorry for the little mouse - she spoke to him and suggested he move over to the nearby garden and not in a hurry and not entirely slow either, he managed his way over to the garden, believe it or not, as if he understood the necessity to do so.
He left his chunk of apple behind him which my neighbor quickly picked up and placed near him in the garden. By necessity, we left him in the garden on this beautiful spring day to make his way. To make it and go on or to end his days which may have come to an end with the possibility of a stomach somewhat filled with a friendly neighbor's apple.
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