Coming back from dinner tonight, in the grass next to one of the dumpsters was a white mouse. Not a small white mouse, a larger one, almost as big as a small rat. And its fur was luminescent and shiny— softly glowing against the dark wet of the ground.
This is something you don’t see everyday, a white mouse. It’s not a rat because I know rats; I had to work with rats when I was getting my Psychology degree. In fact, I became fairly adept working with rats. For instance, I found that the trick to getting a rat that’ll make you look good in your research is to use a fat rat. Fat rats are fat because they learn quickly in order to get the most food.
This rat selection strategy backfired on me one day, though. I was working with a nicely plump rat, conditioning him to wait for a signal to press a lever; if he did, he would get some food. However, if he pressed the lever before or a second or two after the signal — no food.
He sat there passively until I pressed the signal for the first time, then jumped to his feet and raced to the lever: pushing on it with all of his might. My teacher saw this and insisted I use a new rat because I was the one who was supposed to be learning how to work with rats, and a too-smart rat was a bit of a cheat. Unfortunately, all that was left by this time were skinny creatures with vacant eyes who couldn’t find food if you shoved their noses into it.
Anyway, back to the white mouse. As far as I know, white mice aren’t naturally occurring, so I have no idea where this one came from. I imagine someone could have dumped a pet, but white mice are not supposed to be good pets. In fact, white mice are almost always bred for testing within chemical or biological research facilities.
I know that Monsanto is only a few miles away. Makes me wonder about that luminescent quality of the mouse.
As I was researching the white mouse, I stumbled on to an interestingly different, somewhat macabre story, White mice and Dead Cats. Written by a weblogger.
Mice and webloggers do proliferate, don’t they?
