Column: A mouse once asked me - Is it fate, Karma, or poor judgment?
Here is a story about a decision I made, a commitment, that caused a death. I hadn’t planned on it, but it happened.
By Nancy Turner
Nancy Turner
Every day we make decisions. Some we feel good about and some we regret. Some are momentous, like do I take this job, or move, or marry? Most are trivial, like what will I wear today, and what’s for dinner?
Young children need to be taught how to make choices, and with experience, hopefully, comes wisdom. There’s an element of risk. Will we make the right choice? What if I’m wrong? Most of us try to make big decisions too quickly. Often we don’t have enough information to know which way to go. Given too many options, kids feel anxious and insecure. When you take them shopping, the question should not be, “What do you want?” meaning anything in the whole store. It should be, “Do you want a banana or an orange?”
Here is a story about a decision I made, a commitment, that caused a death. I hadn’t planned on it, but it happened.
On a hot August afternoon in 1972, when I was twenty-four, I pedaled my fifteen-speed Gitane bicycle along the torturous and spectacular northern California Hwy 101. My two companions, Nick and Gary, had had the wild idea of riding to Tierra Del Fuego. We were unemployed college grads, so why not? This was before anybody wore helmets or even did long-distance bike rides. There was no bike equipment available. To make panniers, Nick welded metal frames and I sewed sailcloth to make sturdy bags to hang over the front and back racks of our bikes. These held our camping gear, clothing, cooking utensils, and food. A jar of honey for instant energy and a water bottle buried in a bag strapped to our handlebars kept us going without having to stop. Each of us lugged about forty pounds.
The summer sun penetrated my tee shirt, sending rivulets of sweat down my back. Heat waves radiating from the pavement warped the light making the road sizzle. I could hear an insect buzzing above the click-click of my bike chain. Scraggly bushes lined the roadside, and beyond, stiff shore pines framed views of the Pacific Ocean. A Monarch butterfly pulsed yellow and black wings with broad sweeps as it floated skyward.
Pedaling a heavily laden bicycle uphill was exhausting. To conserve energy, I painstakingly and methodically pushed down with one foot while resting the other raised leg. I consciously relaxed one, then the other, mimicking the rest steps mountaineers use. The circular repetition of resting, pushing, resting, pushing, maintained a steady movement forward. I became absorbed with the rhythm of it. It was slow, matching the peddling pace with my labored breathing. I progressed up the hill in the center of the lane with just enough momentum to keep the bike from tipping. My heart pounded and my lungs ached.
Every few minutes I raised my eyes from looking at the road right in front of me to check my direction. About thirty feet ahead I spotted a tiny gray mouse dart from the side of the road straight onto the asphalt. A little way out from the edge of the road it paused, and it turned its shiny black eyes in my direction. I presumed it would continue across the road.
A second later, the little guy shot further into the lane. A few feet ahead of of my bicycle it paused, turned around, and headed back from where it had come. But instead of disappearing into the brush, it turned around and darted back toward the median. This time, when it got to the middle of the lane, it froze for a few seconds and then scurried toward the edge of the road again. The little guy zipped back and forth like this while I plodded onward.
I thought about my narrow tire as the mouse zigzagged in the road. The weight of my cargo prevented me from making sudden turns. If I stopped, given the incline, I knew I’d lose momentum and end up pushing the bike up the hill. My companions hadn’t walked their bikes, and I wasn’t going to either.
I resolved to hold a straight course, assuming the mouse would settle its little mind and go one way or the other. No cars whizzed by. The mouse vacillated all over the place. My decision was made. As I got closer, with just a bike’s length between us, I could see its shiny black eyes and its spindly pale feet.
I thought of Beatriz Potter’s stories and how Mrs. Tittlemouse invited her country cousin for tea in the city, and he in return, invited her to the fields for a picnic. I’ve always felt affection for mice.
I kept pedaling. The mouse saw me coming. It could run anywhere.
The dull thump of bumping over its little body still haunts me. I felt the bike frame lift up and over a half-inch mound. Its carcass, from nose to tail root, was exactly the width of my tire.
It saw me coming.
Why didn’t it run out of the way? Maybe a bicycle did not look like a predator to hide from. Should I have veered off to the side? What if I’d gotten off and walked up the hill? The mouse had the whole road, forty feet across. Why my tire? Maybe the heat, the glaring sunlight, the intense quiet of the afternoon, addled its thinking. Maybe the heat addled mine. My decision to stay my course, to not waver, had caused its death. What if I had not held my course to a straight line, no matter what? What if it had not dithered? What if I’d been more flexible, or the mouse more clear about where it was going? Lots of what-ifs.
Can a mouse’s mind be so tormented that it runs into the road, in broad daylight, hoping a tire or a hawk will end it all? Could I have been possessed by an unconscious disregard for the life of a small creature? For years I believed the lesson from this was to not waffle, not zigzag when making decisions. The mouse would have lived if it had just darted straight across the road.
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Maybe the lesson is more than that. I wouldn’t have murdered an innocent creature if I’d been willing to change my course. I continue to ask myself what brought the two of us on a collision course that resulted in the mouse losing its life. Was it fate? Karma? Poor judgment? I never intended to cause harm. Maybe asking “why” is the wrong question. Life is complex. The answer to why remains a mystery. What I did learn is that we do our best, we make choices with the best information we have at the time, and sometimes the results are good and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes we feel regret, and sometimes we applaud our success.
I still wonder where the little mouse was going.
