Edgar and the Mice

We have had to start setting mouse traps.  Wintertime always sees a population boom.  I wouldn't mind as I actually like mice but they do tunnel into the aviaries making nice snake sized holes for nice snakes to come in and feast on nice budgerigars.  Yesterday we had 3 mice in two traps.  Think our mouse population is healthy.  Anyway, thought these freshly dead mice would make a nice meal for Edgar.  And oh, he was excited by the prospect of Mouse Tartare! 

Oh, he crunched those little mouse skulls.  He pulled at their little mouse feet.  He carried them here.  He carried them there.  He turned them over and turned them back again.  He picked them up and put them down.  He flew them into the trees and flew them back down again.  He checked to see if they would fit between two rocks.  He checked to see if they fit in the rubber matting (they did).  He held them proudly in his beak while turning to look beguilingly over his shoulder at me.

He did everything but eat them.

Finally, bored, he stuffed them back into the rocks and came over to see what other tidbits I had for him to eat. 

While waiting for me to unwrap the meat he snapped ferociously at a gnat.  It was so small I don't know if he killed it or not.

After he'd eaten I gathered the moist rumpled bodies of the mice and carried them into the paddock.  Another game!  Edgar came too.  I put the mice down and left.  He can stuff them into mouse-sized holes away from the house because if I don't find where he puts them (if he puts them near the house) they are going to stink in a few days.

Another morning, another mouse.  I called him and gave him the mouse in the paddock. 

He's also getting a small dog bone two or 3 times a week.  More excitement.  He pins it down with his toenails and pulls the meat with his beak.  He does it very well.  No doubt after having much practice on the clothes pegs.  Am now drying the clothes on the verandah.  Thank you, Edgar.

The Passing of Rev. Daniel Berrigan

Reverend Daniel Berrigan has died.  His life makes cowards of us all.  When he came to prominence, burning draft cards with his brother, Philip in Cantonville Ohio, it barely made a blip on my teenage radar.  I was 13.  But having just read about him in conjunction with Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton in An American Pilgrimage, I can't say there is renewed interest but there is interest.

He spent his life in writing books, poetry and activism.  He said during his trial in Philadelphia for destroying government property after he and six others took hammers to the (unarmed) nosecones of nuclear missiles:  "The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in our name, with our money, secretly...It’s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, “Stop killing.” There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people. There are other projects I could be very helpful at. And I can’t do them. I cannot. Because everything is endangered. Everything is up for grabs. Ours is a kind of primitive situation, even though we would call ourselves sophisticated. Our plight is very primitive from a Christian point of view. We are back where we started. Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today comes down to that — everything."   Italics mine.

Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it - or words to that effect.  Maybe humans just haven't been human long enough to evolve past their reptilian hindbrain.  But that statement is a sham for we have free will, we can and do learn from our mistakes, we are capable of creating the most sublime beauty, of deliberate selflessness.  We can laugh at ourselves, we have a sense of humour, we experience gratitude..  We experience awe.  I'm certain other creatures have a sense of humour, can love, can even create despite their lack of opposable thumbs, but is any creature capable of awe?   Rather than repeating our doleful violent murderous history, why do we not replicate situations where we are likely to feel awe or, as Jung described, that 'oceanic feeling'? 

Finished reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.  She was a Russian half-Jew whose family escaped nearly penniless from the socialist revolution in Russia and resettled in France.  She was a writer and Suite Francaise is the first 2 of 3 books she had planned to write describing the French experience through the eyes of several families under Nazi occupation.  Unfortunately she was gassed at Auschwitz before she could complete them,  She was a well known writer.  Her husband, her publisher and others tried in vain to rescue her, even just to contact her, to send her some food and blankets not knowing even as they tried she was already dead.  She had a brief respite at Auschwitz (while she was part of a slave labour force?) before she died.  Her husband was picked up, transported to Auschwitz and gassed straight away. 

When her voice came through S. F. so clearly it was difficult to read the appendices at the end.  In fact, I couldn't finish them.  When I watch the evening news and hear 27 people were killed in a bomb attack in Afghanistan I feel a frisson of regret but then wonder how I'm going to prepare that eggplant we're having for dinner.  Rev. Daniel Berrigan never let go that regret over innocent deaths.  I, a woman sitting safely at a desk where I sign petitions and write politicians, well fed in my middle class WASP-ish existence, salute him.