I Arrive

Help! Can't stand up. Something keeps knocking me down. Speed, motion, and a sensation of spinning. Round and round and round and...

Uh oh. Urp! Excuse me. (Unpleasant noises off page)

Whew! I think I'll just lie here quietly a bit.

All around it's dark, except above me. Pictures of people and critters flash overhead like a movie,  backwards like someone hit the "reverse" button. Strange. Their clothes seem to be getting more "old fashioned" with every passing second.

I close my eyes and pray this bad dream will end with my lying peacefully in bed.

Suddenly, the spinning stops. I open an eye. Total darkness. Even the pictures are gone.

Then the darkness lifts like a curtan. Outside the tollbooth, a garden, with trees and flowers and shrubberies trimmed in the shapes of jolly woodland critters, spreads out in all directions. It's beautiful, idyllic.

I rise on wobbly legs to my feet and stagger to the edge of the control console. I press my nose to the glass and peer out.

"What has Professor Zacchaeus invented?" I wonder out loud. "A contraption for going to Disneyland?"

"Yeah. And I'm the Big Bad Wolf!" a voice snarls at my back.

I turn slowly.

The Tollbooth

Down, down, down I fall. The lab spirals past my eyes like a dingy kaleidoscope as I tumble through the air. Expecting to splat horribly on impact, I manage a last prayer to confirm my reservations with God and heaven.

But no. I land instead on a strange, non-splatable surface. Professor Zacchaeus’ caboose! His head and torso are jammed under the tollbooth’s console. (Changing the oil probably.)

My unexpected arrival makes him do three things nearly at once:
1) Scream like a little girl
2) Jerk his head up
3) Bash same on the console’s very solid nether regions

Before he can stagger to his feet, I dash up his spine and onto the console. Heart pounding, I dive behind a knob and take a peek at him.

The prof is on his feet and wobbly, holding his baldhead (now a lovely shade of mauve) and blinking behind his thick glasses at the console.

I hold my breath and pray he doesn’t see me.

Finally, he shakes his head, adjusts his glasses, and goes back to work. Wow! A dedicated guy our Zacchaeus. Nearsighted too. Lucky for me.

Another scream. Another crash of skull on hardware.

My horrified eyes behold Blue Vinny, Cheshire, and Hudson charging onto the console. Zacchaeus (probably by now convinced his tollbooth’s haunted) exits like a terrier faced with a bath.

Where he goes, I don’t notice. I am distracted. Three rats are chasing me, and, telling by their censorable language, not to ask me to dinner.

Together, we take a tour of the control console. Around the knob-and-toggle switch farm, through a garden of pretty buttons, now blooming in a spectacular array of blinky lights and colors; then up and down some keyboard steps. Meanwhile, a large screen fills with data, of which the numbers 1, 9, 2, and 2 feature prominently.

A digital timer, with the words “…to launch” beside it, catches my eye as I scramble past.

“5 seconds,” it says.

“4…”

“3…”

“2…”

“1…”

The lights go out.

It All Starts

Great cheesy pizzas! What was I thinking? Should’ve known Blue Vinny, Cheshire, and Hudson would be in Professor Zacchaeus’ lab, waiting for me. Blue Vinny, the one-eyed rat-ogre, has been itching to nab me for the vivisection laboratory ever since I trapped him and his mates in the cafeteria dishwasher…unintentionally, of course. Sheesh! What a sore head!

Oh no! They’ve got me cornered on the lab table. Lucky for me the prof’s a slob. Rubbish galore to hide in and behind.

Make a dash for the ragged curtains hanging off the end of the table and up I go. Rats follow and chase me to the top shelf of a bookcase. Down below, Zacchaeus is mucking about in his “tollbooth”—his latest invention.

Watching him and not where I’m going, I smack into a huge book. With no way around it and Blue Vinny closing in, I’m trapped!

The open top of the prof’s tollbooth yawns beneath me. Blue Vinny, smelling blood (mine!), makes a grab for my throat.

I spit in his eye… and jump!

Whew! Now my turn...

Thanks, old chum, for that lovely (and, by the way, really embarrassing) introduction. (My, I was an impertinent little wart, wasn't I?)

I am now, of course, a good deal older. A good deal more experienced. A lot more mature...

Well, perhaps not.

Careening through a life fraught with incident (much of it of the near-death variety) has made me believe that a sense of humor and a direct line to my inner mouse pup (still alive and giggling) are absolute musts.

Thus my blog. Welcome, by the way, to this my first installment.

Every weekend, I'll be dishing up a tasty dollop of mad-mouse casserole for your enjoyment.

So, pull up a chair, ready your spoon, arrange your napkin, and prepare to dig in!

Hugs and kisses, Prudence

An Introduction, by C. D. Davis

I met Prudence Dapperling during my first-ever trip to London. It was June of an unusually hot and dry summer, and I was searching for a place that could satisfy my American thirst for something with ice in it. This naive quest eventually led me down a narrow street. As I walked along, I came across a sign of crumbling granite in front of an old and decaying building. Through the moss and bird droppings, I read:

University of St. Kyle

Established 1958

And spray-painted beneath it:

for no particular reason

This lack of school spirit caused me a pang of pity for the old dump. I looked up and down the street, deserted at the moment. St. Kyle's students had gone home, I guessed, for the summer. I was about to walk on when--

Squeak

A shriek of pure terror and the sensation of small feet dashing over my Doc Martens arrested my attention.

"What the--?!" I howled and looked down.

A small mouse was running for her life. (I deduced it was a "she" from the school uniform she wore. The skirt, you know.) She ran upright on her hind legs, glancing behind her with eyes round and wet with fear. 

Something heavy thumped down on the toes of my right, then my left foot.

"Hey!" I cried and found the source of her distress.

Three rats chased her. One was large, off-white, and wearing an eye patch and a striped jersey. Another was even larger, wearing what, to my astonished eyes, looked like armor and a shiny chrome cone on his head. The third, riding on the back of the metal-clad critter, was bony and bald-spotted in an ill-fitting running suit; this one whined and coughed a lot.

Feeling sorry for the mouse pup in the uniform, I slammed a foot down in front of the cheeky rats. The three stopped and looked up. I glowered down at them and growled. With a yowl of terror, they turned and skittered away, abandoning their chase. 

I burst out laughing. "That'll teach 'em!" 

"I doubt it. But thanks ever so!" a tiny voice piped near my feet. 

"Who said that?" I demanded.

"Oh I did. Down here."

I looked at my shoes. Standing 6 inches from my right instep was the mouse, looking up at me and smiling.

I goggled at her, dumbstruck.

"Oh dear," she gasped, a paw to her throat. "I thought, by the way you came to my rescue, that you were a knower."

"A 'knower' of what?" I heard myself ask.

"About us rodents," she answered. "Some humans are, you know. I wouldn't have spoken to you otherwise."

"Of course," I mumbled, kneading my forehead. 


I wondered for a moment if I were really asleep and this just a dream. To say I was befuddled would be an understatement. 


"Does knowing when a critter needs help escaping a gang of plug-uglies, and giving it, make me a 'knower'?" I asked a bit desperately. 

The mouse studied me a moment, then nodded. "Yes, it does," she declared, grinning.

I grinned back, feeling strangely gratified.

"Perhaps we should go somewhere where we can talk--" She glanced anxiously at the street. "--unobserved."

I followed her gaze. Two men stood staring at me like I had iguanas crawling from my ears.

"Barmy American," one of them muttered. They shook their heads and walked off.

"I see your point," I said. I bent down and laid my hand on the pavement, palm up. "Want a lift?"

The mouse climbed into my hand and made herself comfortable. "We'll go to Professor Zacchaeus' laboratory," she said. "He's off on holiday.  Won't be back for at least another day or two."

I frowned.  "Who's Professor Zacchaeus?"

"A sort of... friend of mine," she replied. "Just through there." She pointed at the big front doors of St. Kyle's.

Despite my doubts (and better judgment), I entered the building. We made our way through the cavernous foyer, down musty, deserted corridors, past yellowing walls and filthy windows, and over threadbare carpets and wooden floors worn nearly to the foundations. 

"Are you sure this place isn't condemned?" I asked, wrinkling my nose at it. 

"This happens to be my home and that of several generations of Dapperlings before me," the mouse sniffed indignantly.

"Sorry," I apologized. "'Dapperlings', did you say?"

"Yes. That's my name. Dapperling. Prudence Dapperling. Turn here!"

I made a right down a short hall at the end of which was an old door on rusty hinges. I raised a questioning eyebrow. She smiled up at me and nodded. We entered a large room so filled with books and clutter, it seemed cramped. In the middle, standing by itself, was what looked like a glass tollbooth. 

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at it. 

"Just one of the professor's inventions." She waved a dismissive paw. "How about putting me down on that lab table? We can talk there."

I carried her to a long, scarred table against the wall. It was covered with books, papers, clocks, wires, tools, computer components, software, and smelly old food and drink containers. Prudence planted herself on a thumb drive. I pulled up a chair, cleared the papers from it, and sat down.

"We're really not supposed to reveal ourselves to humans," she announced. "At least, not our true selves."

"You mean dressed and chatty and bipedal like?" I offered.

"Yes, like that. When we are accidentally spotted by people, we're supposed to go feral."

"Go what?" 

"You know. Feral." To demonstrate, she made her eyes go wide and vacant, hopped down on all fours, and wriggled her nose, whiskers, and tail. She then sat back on her haunches and licked and rubbed her paws very fast, like I'd always seen rodents do on Animal Planet.

"So, it's all just an act?" I marveled.

"Yes," the mouse sighed, wrinkling her nose. "Without the clothes, naturally. It's a deadly bore. And so-o-o-o embarrassing." Prudence rolled her eyes.

 I swallowed a laugh. "I can only imagine."

"I hate doing it."

"Understandable."

"So, when Blue Vinny, Cheshire, and Hudson chased me--"

"Who?"

"The rats."

"Oh yeah. Them."

"When the rats chased me outside and I ran into you and you saved me from them, I figured you were a knower, that you understood, so I didn't do it. Go feral, I mean."

"Well, I do understand now. Sort of." I stared at her a moment then asked, "Why do you all go feral whenever humans see you?"

"Because that's what they expect," Prudence retorted matter-of-factly.

"But why not be yourselves?"

"Because humans are happy believing that they alone have civilization and culture and government." The mouse smiled. "We want them to be happy."

I eyed her doubtfully. "By 'happy', you mean blissfully ignorant, don't you?"

She made a face and shrugged. "Well... yes. You humans do tend to get a bit overwrought about things you don't understand."

I nodded. "And then we can get a lot dangerous."

Prudence nodded back, wide-eyed. "Exactly."

I looked at her in wonder. I never dreamed a mere rodent could be so interesting.

"I'm very glad to know you, Prudence Dapperling," I said... and meant it.

"Right back at you!" the mouse replied with feeling.

I extended a finger. She grasped it in both paws. We shook on our friendship.

Since then, I've been blessed to know this mouse and her amazing life, spent in almost as many times and places as the imagination can travel. Such a story she has! If only she'd share it, I told her, the world might gain a few more knowers. And that wouldn't be a bad thing. Would it?