On Sunday I had two of my phobias confronted.

Saturday night Billie and her husband had stopped over at our house after a birthday curry with Karl (who has royally pissed me off, and more on that another day) for a slosh of wine and some gossip. Rising and shining on Sunday morning, Angus and I went about the action that is our Sunday-coffee. Bagels with eggs and sausages (my sausages are made of tofu, spinach and gruyere. I love them and, unsurprisingly, they taste like chicken.) A shower and a walk to get the newspaper.

Heading into the living room at about 9 am I saw the unmistakable parcel by the couch that is Billie's purse. I know this for a fact as I sat next to Billie and saw her upend the entire thing on the floor on accident, and I got to tuck her tampax into her Day-Timer to avoid embarrassment. These are the things women look out for, after all). Sighing, I slide Angus' flip-flops on my feet and clad in sweatshirt shorts and an old T-shirt (as we are off to Brighton that afternoon to do garden work on Angus' house), I flip-flop my way to Billie's house, greeting the Billie's cat, the sole surviving Tabby Bomb, who is busy stupidly chasing a bumblebee in the common.

I knock on the door and am greeted by a cacophony of sounds-Billie has two dogs, one a dachshund named Hartford and, as if to prove that life really is all about opposites, the other one is a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy named Burt already weighing in at about 100 pounds. Burt is gorgeous-happy, big brown eyes, and masses of lean muscle under a massive fur coat that you can only think you control. Trust me-when Burt gets something in his mind nothing short of a National Guard roadblock can stop this dog.

I flip open the mail chute and talk to Burt and Hartford, much to their barking delight and Billie's nightmares. She comes slogging down the stairs in a denim shirt hastily and incorrectly buttoned over a pink satin nightgown and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. She looks exhausted. I decide the best course of action is to be as annoyingly bright and sunny as possible.

'Good morning!' I chip at a high octave. Billie winces and Burt dances around. 'You forgot your purse! Great morning, isn't it?'

Billie looks as though her head is about to pop off. I grin. Burt is going mental and just as I hand the purse over to Billie he lunges out the door. Billie sighs in such a way as to indicate that the world is against her, and I laugh and run after Burt. I manage to grab his collar and am allowing myself to be dragged back to Billie's house when I see the Tabby Bomb has something. I lug Burt over to Tabby Bomb and see there, shivering and shaking in the grass in front of Tabby Bomb, is a little mouse.

A little mouse that has had one of its eyes ripped out.

'Ohmigod!' I scream. Billie snaps out of her hungover haze and races outside in the bunny slippers, followed by Hartford. 'Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod!' I release Burt who makes a beeline for the neighbor's recently planted snapdragons. I grab the looking-very-pleased-with-herself Tabby Bomb to keep her from tormenting the mouse. Tabby Bomb hates this move and so in one Wolverine like move ejects her claws directly into the soft skin of my upper hand.

I scream but bear it. Billie comes racing over and sees the mouse. 'For God's sake, Helen. It's just a mouse.'

'I'm not scared!' I say, exasperated and freaked out, remarkably at the same time. 'We just can't let Tabby Bomb kill the mouse!' I am suddenly the Great Vermin Defender. I will try to save the tiny mouse, knowing that any day now it could be comfortably nesting in my sweaters in the loft in my home.

Phobia number one: Injury to animals. Any animals. Including those that tend to gift the human population with little gifts like chewed heating cables, mouse droppings, and the plague.

Billie manages to grab a manic Burt and takes a close look at the trembling mouse and sees the blood down the side of the face and the eyeball hanging wonkily down the chin. Billie's chin trembles and at once, we are united. She looks at me. 'You have to save the mouse.'

'I know!' I wail. Kurt pokes his head out the door and is greeted to Billie and I, dressed to unimpress, and Burt who is trying to find new ways to wrench Billie's shoulder out of socket.

'Kurt! Kurt! Get a box!' I shout.

He blinks. 'What?'

'A box! A box! Get a box!' Billie and I shout. I am desperately trying to hold a very unhappy Tabby Bomb, and my hands are beginning to look like a roadmap of bleeding red cuts.

Kurt blinks and slowly turns inside to get a box. His lack of haste is whipping me. Burt is barking like mad and I see curtains around the terrace twitching as people open them up to see what the commotion is. Tabby Bomb takes a moment to flip upside down and park her claws in the soft flesh of my inside thigh, which elicits a scream of pure agony from me. More curtains twitch open. I involuntarily release Tabby Bomb and she takes off running. Burt is now foaming at the mouth in his best Cujo impression and Billie has lost a bunny slipper somehow to the nearby bushes. Kurt finally moseys out carrying a box, and hands it to me.

I bend down to try to corral the mouse into the box. The mouse jumps sideways and touches me. I scream in panic and a few doors of terrace homes open to the continuing Sunday morning commotion.

'For God's sake, Helen!' says an exasperated Billie. 'Just pick up the poor thing!'

But I can't do this.

Not because I am afraid of mice, because I'm really not.

Not because I fear being bitten, because I really don't.

I scream because I now have to confront my second phobia-germs.

The mouse, while a desperate and important rescue mission, is suddenly something that needs a liberal bath of Purell antibiotic gel. There are germs crawling all over it, I just know it. The eyeball alone has enough germs to make typhus look like a walk in the park. I want to hold the wild mouse and soothe it and pet it, and I may just about be able to do that, but I still have that last threshold to cross, and right now the situation is not ideal for the crossing of it.

The mouse jumps at Billie and we both shout, startled.

A few more front doors open.

Billie hands me Burt and reaches for the mouse. Out of the corner of my eye I see Tabby Bomb silently stalking the twitching rodent, and I panic. Pure and sheer panic. One of the neighbors who has come outside to investigate steps up to me.

In my best Christopher Lloyd Who Framed Roger Rabbit impersonation, I become a babbling raving idiot.

'The Tabby Bomb! THE TABBY BOMB!' I scream two octaves above my normal speaking voice, pointing at the scary offending feline. Neighbor looks at me confused. 'Bad-very bad! Keep it away! It will destroy! IT WILL KILL!'

Neighbor looks at the tiny tabby cat and looks back at me. I can see it flash in his eyes that he doesn't understand why it is I am so afraid of a small neutered house pet, so he nervously back up to his doorstep, smiling nervously, hoping to appease the crazy American lady.

Another neighbor comes out. I am desperately holding onto Burt who, in his excitement, is slowly choking himself to death with his collar. Kurt has freaked out and hightailed it back to his entryway and Billie is still trying to catch the suddenly vibrant mouse. I see a flash of the eyeball hanging out on the poor little guy, and the neighbor, who has approached me out of curiousity, gets it.

'The EYEBALL!' I rave, having stepped right off the deep end and landed into a pool of crunchy-granola animal lovers. 'There is blood everywhere and it's BLIND FOR LIFE! And there's only one, there's no three blind mice! It is all alone! There is BLOOD and NO EYEBALL and we MUST SAVE IT!'

He stares at me, possibly wondering if the insanity I am infected with is contagious or if it's more of a 24-hour viral madness that one can be innoculated against. Billie manages to grab the mouse, which then uses her hand as a springboard and neatly does a half-pike, double-twist with a flourish into the nearest bushes. We scramble to find it before Tabby Bomb does and instead manage to lose the mouse completely in the vegetation.

Billie and I look at each other and assess the situation. The majority of the terrace has now seen her in a pink satin nightgown with a jeans shirt buttoned over it wearing one fuzzy and worn-out bunny slipper. Burt has lost the plot and is doing his best rabid dog impersonation in case Animal Rescue TV crews happen to be walking by. Hartford is sitting square in the middle of the neighbors newly planted marigolds. Tabby Bomb is racing around looking predatorial and, frankly pissed off. I am dressed like a contestant in the 'I Don't Give a Fuck' clothing contest and it is clear I have been crying and screaming. We smile at everyone.

'Morning.' We say nervously. 'Morning. Nice day, isn't it?'

I hand Burt over to Billie and try to make my exit. 'Just stopping by. Er...drama. Who knew?'

I race home.

Still worried about that mouse.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 12:02 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 1667 words, total size 9 kb.

1 *lol*

Posted by: ~Easy at May 16, 2005 01:21 PM (PuO20)

2 My mom somehow managed to train each and every preditory pet we had that it was not ok to kill what they caught. Our cat was by far the most proficient, and it was almost a weekly ritual, a never ending stream of tailless lizards, slobbered on, but unharmed mice, and various freaked out, but again unharmed small birds. The best (in hindsight, definitly not at the time) was our Doberman who managed to nab a baby skunk, not so baby that it couldn't make a stink though. The dog was headed for the back door of the house, eye's watering, litttle white striped tail wrapped around his nose like custom hand muff. Fortunatly my mom saw this, and yelled for him to "drop it" which he did. The skunk scurried off, and the dog got his "good boys", I think he thought the tomato juice bath was overdoing the adulation though, heh

Posted by: Dane at May 16, 2005 02:11 PM (ncyv4)

3 Hey, no problem. I'll take Tabby Bomb The Killer Cat. She'll have a ball here in Baltimore making mince meat out of the rats. Since Tabby Bomb is already half American, she won't have any problems getting a rat-CATching permit (unlike some people who live here, who can't get any papers at all, *cough, cough*). But if she wants to, we'll still pay her in cash and catnip under the table.

Posted by: redsaid at May 16, 2005 03:40 PM (01bsD)

4 Thank you. I needed a good laugh to start my day off!

Posted by: amy t. at May 16, 2005 03:47 PM (zPssd)

5 Good for you for doing your best to save the little mouse. Karma will reward you by having another little mouse have to decide whether to build a nest in your favorite sweater or chewing thru some jerk's internet connection...and I suspect your sweater will be safe. I know you're worried, but I suspect the mouse will be OK. One-eyed, but OK--Mother Nature has shown me time and time again she's a wonderful nurse.

Posted by: Victor at May 16, 2005 07:25 PM (L3qPK)

6 One of the primary reasons I had a cat was to keep mice away from our house. Tabby Bomb was just doing what God created her to do. Dane, that's very impressive about your mom. That kind of gift could get one a Nobel Peace Prize

Posted by: Solomon at May 16, 2005 09:44 PM (k1sTy)

7 Oh thank you, thank you. I woke up this morning blue and sore and now I'm laughing my ass off, tears streaming down my face. Thank you, that was better than therapy!

Posted by: Syd at May 17, 2005 02:10 PM (oDUE0)

8 If you were scratched bad enough to break your skin, please watch your scratchs. If red lines start going up your body parts near the scratches, you have blood poisoning. Go to a doctor. (cats can cause this) Remember that rats brought the plague. Mice are just smaller versions. Maybe you were a Buddist or Hindu in a previous life, since you do not want to harm any creatures. On a positve mouse note: Mickey Mouse always brings joy.

Posted by: iowa at May 18, 2005 01:22 AM (i/5Q1)

9 Actually, fleas brought the plague. Dogs, cats, mice, rats...and humans...carried the fleas.

Posted by: Victor at May 19, 2005 04:22 PM (L3qPK)

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