Just happening to glance down while heading towards my car ended up derailing any other plans I had hoped to accomplish yesterday afternoon. Following a medical appointment and walking across the hospital parking lot, a small movement on the pavement caught my eye. Bending down to see what it was revealed what appeared to be a miniscule, young mouse, staggering and writhing around on the ground.

With surprise, I looked around to see if there was a mother mouse, or any more babies around, but there was just the one. A yellow jacket was aggressively hovering over it, perhaps laying claim to an anticipated future lunch. I wasn’t sure what to do. It was close to 90 degrees out and the pavement was very hot. Knowing I couldn’t just leave it there to be fried in the blazing afternoon sun, stung by hornets or even run over by a car, I looked around to see if there was any grassy area or shade nearby that I could at least move it to, but in this large city hospital parking lot there was none.

How did it get there? Perhaps dropped by a bird…or maybe it had rolled out of a nest that had been housed within the engine of a passing car? Either way, here it was now, landed at my feet. So while saying aloud to myself, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I bent down and scooped the little mouse up with my folded appointment discharge papers. I had to swat away the territorial and probably enraged yellow-jacket that came after me, as I quickly ducked into my car.

The mouse did not appear in very good shape. I don’t know how long it had been lying there, but it was clearly dehydrated, its little eyes were sunken, and its fur was so stiff and dried out that small tufts were flaking off. It must have been in pain, yet it kept moving around and flipping over, still fighting to stay alive. Finding a small, empty tin of Trader Joe’s green tea mints in the car, I put the mouse inside in order to contain it for the ride home.

But it looked so pathetic and uncomfortable as it continued to roll around in there, so I dug through my purse until I found a tissue to line the box. And then we hit the road for the drive home.

At this juncture I would like to say a little bit more about this mouse, and about mice in general. I don’t care for them at all. Having experienced a few childhood failures with having rodents as pets, I can say with quite certainty that mice are just not my thing. In that way I am very unlike my sister Charlotte, who had a beloved pet rat which she allowed to roam freely through her home, and who cried copiously when it passed away.

I have plenty of outrageous mouse tales to share (see “Would You Like Some Mice With That” or “The Other Car” for just a few past examples). If there were mice in my home, I would not hesitate to set mouse traps. Beyond the diminutive size of this poor little guy, there was nothing cute about it, as it was in terrible, almost cadaverous shape. While saddened at its condition, had there been a shady patch of grass or woods nearby, I probably would have left it there to the fates of nature, where something might have eventually eaten it, ala circle-of-life. But to leave it on that hot asphalt to suffer and be scavenged by hornets while still alive was just too cruel a scenario to allow. So I took it with me, figuring if it did not survive then I would just bury it in my yard when I got home.

The mouse remained alive and active, twirling around in that small container for the entire hour-long ride, at which point I started making calls to people who might know anyone who rehabbed small mammals. The next three hours were spent doing searches and making phone calls, beginning with a call to a friend who had a friend who rehabbed squirrels – unfortunately she was in the middle of moving. A list of certified local wildlife rehabilitators from the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) website was consulted, which I discovered is pathetically outdated and limited.

I called or texted fourteen (yes, that’s 14) people. Some of those numbers were no longer in service or were now wrong numbers. One who answered said they no longer were rehabbing wildlife. One texted me a lead which proved to be a dead end. The majority of them only rehabbed birds or larger animals. One person who did not take rodents gave me suggestions and information on care of orphaned mice and pointed me to a certification site to become a wildlife rehabilitator myself (which I do not want to become). All of these rehabbers are volunteers, probably with regular day jobs. The one local person that appeared to be a hopeful texted me that she was out of town at the moment.

While this was going on, the little mouse was relocated to an empty box of Klondike Bars with a padding of paper towels. I wet a cotton ball with a bit of water and it grabbed onto that and started licking the moisture from it. I gave it a raspberry, which it clung to, trying to pull liquid. You can see it is about as small at the first joint of my finger.

I called the local SPCA, who could not help and just shared the same DEC list. I called my veterinarian’s office, who also gave me the exact same names I had already called from the list. I posted the situation on a couple of social media sites and was mostly given the same DEC lists yet again. A few people highly recommended one particular rescue organization, but upon calling them I only got a message machine stating they said they would call me back…… nobody ever did. I then called the DEC directly and spoke to the person in charge of Wildlife, who told me that mice are just considered vermin, therefore people don’t rehab them. It occurred to me that people probably were thinking I was some crazy old lady, putting out all this effort for a dehydrated mouse-let. Was I?

So the realization finally dawned on me that I had just become responsible for this tiny thing, which would need to be fed every few hours. Had I even wanted to take this on, it presented a problem, as I was not going to be around and available to invest myself in such a project. In the meantime, some Pedialyte, a super small dropper, and maybe some goat’s milk was going to be needed in order to rehydrate it and keep it alive while pursuing other solutions. Leaving little Mouse-let in a safe place, I grabbed my car keys and was was heading out in search of those items, when suddenly one of the rehabbers I had messaged texted me back.

She said she was already fostering a few fawns and some other animals, so she could not consider taking the mouse. But she gave me the name of another organization in another county to try calling. So I did that. This establishment did not rescue mice, but the person at the desk suggested someone at a veterinary practice who did. So I called them and wonder of wonders, they said “Bring it in”. I cannot quite express the feeling I experienced hearing those words.

Mouse-let and I got back in the car and drove an additional forty minutes or so to a veterinary office. We were greeted by friendly staff and a wonderful, caring doctor, who invited me to “give us a call tomorrow to see how your mouse is doing”. So I handed over the mouse with gratitude.

The drive home sans mouse included a rush of tremendous relief. It is possible that it’s too far gone already to save, and might not even live through the night, but at least it would have been surrounded by care and an attempt to provide comfort. There is the reality that even if the mouse does manage to survive and be brought back to health, eventually it would be released back into the wild – with a good chance of being immediately snatched up by an owl or a fox. Yet somehow this feels more acceptable to me than suffering an agonizing death in a blazing hot parking lot.

This got me thinking about the value of a life. Why do some have value and not others? Nobody wanted to save a tiny mouse. A rodent. Vermin. Had the circumstances been different, had there been a cool, grassy area to place it on, I would have left it there and not gotten into this convoluted adventure. Where does compassion begin and end? What makes one being considered worthy and another not? I would have easily killed the hornet if it wouldn’t leave me alone, but not a bee. Or taken a swatter to a horsefly that got into my house and was dive-bombing my head. Yet I would save a spider and relocate it outside.

I do not want to get into any debates concerning ethics here. I am not vegan, and while mostly vegetarian, at this point in my life I will still eat fish and rarely but occasionally (and OK, with a twinge of guilt) indulge in a BLT sandwich or an infrequent chicken marsala. I don’t condemn those who choose either path. But I gave all of those things much thought on the drive home. Where does one draw the line? What here, if any, is the lesson?

The mouse spent a total of eighty miles in the car with me, not counting the extra twenty or so miles it took to get home after dropping it off. We drove through three counties and burned a significant amount of gas in the process. Three hours on the phone and internet were spent looking for help, and I had to abandon the plans I had made for the afternoon. Was it worth it? At that moment I would say yes, it was.

This morning I called the veterinary office to check up the the mouse and was told that sadly he (or she) did not survive, so there is really no happy ending to this mouse tale. While hopeful, realistically I didn’t expect there to be. Still, I admit my heart hurt a little as I hung up the phone. I also admit I have a bit of a lump in my throat as I type this.

I ask myself again now, was it worth all the effort? And again, without getting into any rhyme, reason or depth of explanation, I would still have to say…. yes.

~*~