mouse house

There was a little mouse running around near Gate B16 or so of O'Hare airport early in the morning, and I sat there with my chai and coffee cake, watching it dart about.

I used to be a shrieker and a stand-on-chairer when it came to mice, but that was before I lived in South Sudan. I had to give up standing on chairs at the sight of a mouse, because there were snakes to drive me up onto chairs while entire rooms of people laughed at me and then went outside in their flipflops to kill the snake with stones and sticks.

Also, there was a little mouse living in the wall of my tukul. As long as there is a mouse running around, there are no snakes. That little mouse ran along the wall of my tukul almost every morning, and now when I see a little mouse, even in an airport, I look upon it fondly.

A man startled as he walked past. "Did you see that?" he asked. "There was a mouse!"

"Yes," I said, un-alarmed. "It's been running around here for a while now."