4-01-09

For the past two weeks, Spring has slowly bubbled up from its hidden sources. The trees were still barren, and the earth remained brown; but a few flowers have been impatient early-risers. At first, the crocuses raised their heads in clusters of purple laughter. Gradually, much as adolescence overtakes childhood, the yellow crocuses' far-flung guffaws replaced the innocent chortles of the early purple. Now shallow pools of violets have collected in every dip and hollow like rainwater. I want to go puddle-jumping. What would splash marks from a violet puddle look like, I wonder?
On Saturday night, we had a thunderstorm. Lightening bathed the world in sparks of lavender magic. The trees, the earth…it called them out of their dreams. They yawned and stretched. By Sunday morning, naked limbs and bare ground rippled with sleepy-eyed greenery. A late snow passed through on Sunday afternoon—forcing chill faerie kisses on the chaste daffodil buds. But the summons of that lavender magic was stronger: the greenery won’t be retreating into dreams anytime soon. The trees and earth have a renewed interest in the world.

The cats were very intent upon the old dishwasher in our kitchen last Saturday morning. I could only assume that a mouse or some other critter had crawled inside of it. (I guess it's a good thing we always wash our dishes by hand.) I left the terrible duo to their vigil, and spent the day with a friend. When I arrived home Saturday night, the dishwasher door was open. Yes, that's right. Somehow those two rascals managed to flip open the door of the dishwasher! Personally, I had never bothered to look inside the machine before. There was still some standing water, as well as a few dishes—fugitives left to molder for who knows how many years. There was also a mouse huddled under a glass measuring cup in the lower rack. He was partially hidden by the large metal spoon. I don’t think I would have spotted him if he hadn’t happened to sneeze just as I reached down to close the dishwasher door. Realizing he’d been noticed, the mouse gave up on his ploy of immobility. He sneezed twice more and briefly washed his brown face. Then he inspected me from the safety of his glass fortress, his nose whiffling in perpetual suspicion. Quite frankly, I was puzzled over what I ought to do. It’s generally frowned upon to encourage rodents; but could I really catch and kill it? And how had it escaped from the cats? We stared at each other for several minutes. Eventually, he sneezed again.
“Hey, what’re you lookin’ at?” The glass measuring cup warped and amplified his small voice.
“M-me? I-I-I’m not looking at anything.” Except a talking mouse! Oh my gosh, a talking mouse!
“Well beat it! I already paid off the cats, and I wanna take a nap. So scram!” And with that, he sneezed a final time, turned his back on me, and curled up to sleep. Incredulous, I could only stare. Eventually I closed and locked the dishwasher door. I hope the rodent slum lord enjoyed his nap.
**April Fool! In case you didn’t notice, this is not an absolutely truthful account. (And for anyone who didn’t notice, you might want to visit your doctor in the near future…) The mouse is completely fictitious. At least, the one I saw was fictitious. The cats did manage to open the dishwasher, though. And I did shut and lock the door against any further attempts. Knowing these two cats, they’ll move on to bigger and better mischief. I do wonder what sort of currency that mouse used to bribe them, though. Hmmm. Well, whatever he offered was apparently insufficient: I found a dead mouse on the kitchen floor Sunday night. He got the cement shoes.