We didn’t have animal rescue centers in our town when I was a kid—just the “dog pound.” As the name implies, dogs were considered the animal most worthy of rescue.  They may have taken cats, reluctantly.  The fact of which was impressed upon my young mind when pulling a burlap sack out of Butler Creek, I opened it to discover a few rocks and a half dozen drowned kittens.  Shocked and indignant, I vowed to myself to be an animal rescuer.

My first endeavor in that pursuit was to “rescue” a nestful of baby mice I’d discovered under an old board pile: eight or ten little “pinkies.”  I had always heard the country legend that if you disturbed a nest of whatever sort, the mother would not return.  So now I was obliged to care for the squirming little creatures.  I picked up the nest with all its downy plant material and brought it home.  Finding an old berry box and some cotton batting, I made a wonderful new nest; and to keep it warm, I placed it on the top of the fridge where the heat rises from the coils.  Seeing them calm and content, I went on to other kid’s business.

Now my mother was a screamer—a really loud screamer when she was startled.  Heart-stopping screams, which is what I soon heard from the kitchen.  Then her summons:

“DA,” (short for Dean Alan), “come here right now!”

I had two older brothers, but why she immediately suspected this little “nature boy” was a suspicion well justified, given past events.

“What in the world is this?” she asked, holding the berry box and the poor little pinkies now aroused—and deafened—by Mother’s having discovered them by foolishly sticking her fingers in the mystery box before looking.  So I had to explain to her that I was now the surrogate mother to the mice—my having disturbed the nest and for sure causing their mother to abandon them.

Blood pressure now more normal, she continue the query:  “O, so you are now going to feed ten little mice until they can feed themselves?  Do you know that a mouse probably nurses her babies every half hour?  Are you going to get up at night every half hour and nurse baby mice?  Did you notice how little their mouths are?  What are you going to find that’s small enough to feed them with?

At that point I was feeling a lot like Job being question by God about what he thought he knew about the creation.  I mumbled a suggestion about using my sister’s doll bottles, the tiny little ones girls used then for their clever toy infants, which had little round mouth holes where water from the bottle would go down a plastic tube through the body to wet their miniature diapers.

My sincere suggestion was cut off by Mother’s cruel laughter—cruel because of what she then suggested: “No, you’re going to have to kill them; and the most merciful way is to flush them down the toilet.”  I was horrified at the thought—my dismay made more intense by the growing realization that my first rescue was not going to be successful.  But I sure was not going to drown them.  I knew how ugly animal drowning was.  I offered a counter plan: I would gas them.

“Gas them with what,” she asked with amused skepticism.

“Carbon monoxide,” was my reply.  And, believe it or not, after explaining my quickly devised plan, Mom turned the whole euthanasia project over to me and my oldest brother, Dick, who knew how to drive—at 14 and illegally [Our dad was a car dealer].  Dick would start the car, and I would put the mice in the tailpipe until they went to sleep for the last time.  Simple and merciful.

Sadly, the endeavor was not that.  Poor communication between the back of the car and the driver’s seat resulted in my inability to stuff a rag in the tailpipe behind the mice before Dick started the car.  Quick ignition and a mighty V-8 “vahrooom” sent the poor little pinkies out across the asphalt as though fired from a cannon, which required me and my friends who had gathered for the mercy killing to have to end their misery by killing  them with quick stomps.

Because we associate mice with unhealthful home conditions and generally kill them whenever we discover them, most folks laugh when I tell that story.  Good riddance, we think: pinkies grow up to be dirty rodents.  In a sense, though, the story is an illustration of how our carelessness, disinterest, and ignorance of God’s creation often cause great and unnecessary misery for His other creatures.  While I didn’t know the story of Job’s divine correction when I was eight, I do now.  And I’m grateful that the Creator has allowed me to live long enough to gain a far greater appreciation of all animals and their place in His economy—and in His heart of compassion.

“The eyes of all look to you [Lord], and you give them their food at the proper time.  You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. . . .   The Lord is good to all; and he has compassion on all he has made” (Psalm 145:16, 9)

See you outdoors!

Dean