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Mice in the walls

Tuesday night, the blizzard is raging outside my little old rehabbed school house. I am up late, working alone. A single lamp burns in the living room, so that if there were any cars on the state road , they would see the warm inviting windows. My office is bright and warm, my old granny-cat curled on my lap. Occasionally I turn out the lights and peek through the window. I can see only snowflakes and darkness, whirling together in the night. The wind howls and beats the walls.

This house that has stood here for more than a hundred years is snug and warm around me. This is not the worst storm it has seen. Its walls have held back worse winds, sheltered us and other families from other terrible storms. I feel safe and warm here in the circle of my lamp.

Upstairs my guys are sleeping. On cold nights, our son and his five pet mice and our hamster all pile into the master bedroom, fire up the electric heater, and snuggle in. The faint rumble of an exercise wheel filters through the ceiling, which of course is the floor directly above me.

I can hear a faint scratching in the wall near the chimney. It is a mouse family, hidden in the walls. All country houses have mice, as far as I know. They come in from the fields in autumn, sheltering in secluded crannies of old buildings, and wait out the cold and the storms. They don’t hurt anything. I understand their need for shelter and I bear them no malice.

Far above me and the mice, in our attic, generations of lady bugs are hibernating and cellar spiders are spinning webs. Some other family I don’t know might be secreted up there, too, all riding out the winter.

Tomorrow when the storm dies, I will put extra suet in the feeders, make some popcorn for the starlings, and toss out some nuts for the squirrels. For the moment, we are all safe--the ladybugs and the spiders and the mice, my family and pets and I. We are safe here, together, in this old schoolhouse, in the storm.