Bob and Bea

Everybody should have a garden. Even if it doesn't belong to you. Even if it's only in your mind. A green space where you feel free to roam, smell a flower, pick a berry or a mushroom, move the earth and plant a seed. While rummaging through my garden one day I spied a little mouse. He paused a while to sniff and talk, and even pose for pictures. Mice don't usually talk to strangers, they're very cautious. He must have seen something trustworthy in me. I found him to be a very polite and entertaining conversationalist. We shared some berries and mushrooms, talking about our love of green spaces and gardens. Then the talk turned to family and relations and family histories. He was very interested in a certain relative of mine who once lived in castle in Scotland. She was a very beautiful young girl and she fell in love with the castle gardener and ran off with him. This couldn't be tolerated in those days and so the pair were exiled to the frozen wastelands of Canada where they were expected to perish in the snow amongst the polar bears. Some people, it seems, are very intolerant of the actions of others. Some re-actions have unforeseen consequences of their own. Without a good gardener, the castle grounds went to rot. Meanwhile, Canada became a great place to garden and the polar bears never did find any fault in love. Polar bears much prefer seals, anyways. This story reminded the mouse of a run-in he once had with a seal on the ice floes of Newfoundland back in the 1970's. There were a bunch of people out on the ice hunting seals and there were some other people out trying to stop people from hunting the seals. This one seal had been sat on by somebody who claimed to be saving the seals life, but the seal was fairly perturbed because the person was rather heavy and the seal found it hard to breathe. The mouse never did explain how he got to be out on the ice off the coast of Newfoundland and then somehow found himself in my garden some forty-five odd years later. So I think that mouse might have been one to tell tall tales. That's ok, I love a good story. Most of us got to where we are today by traveling around either by foot or boat or canoe. One of Canada's longest-serving Prime Ministers used to get around by canoe on occasion. It turns out mice like birch bark canoes, too. Who would have guessed? It turns out this mouse liked to travel by boat and was all over the eastern seacoast and up through the great lakes before he made it all the way to my place. The story of my ancestors reminded this mouse of stories his grandmother, Lee, used to tell him about her mother and a time long ago. It was the seal who really preoccupied his mind, though, and he would go back time and again as to how haggard the seal looked from its struggle to stay alive. He would have talked with the seal longer but it seems while they were preoccupied with talking about the sealers a polar bear snuck up from behind and had the seal for lunch. There's few things as hairy as mouse tales. That's how life goes sometimes. You talk about one thing and then you're paddling your canoe up some river wondering why that polar bear ate that seal. Probably because it was hungry. The mouse and I both agreed we prefer berries and mushrooms. Each to his own. I didn't mention that I have a cat. I especially didn't mention this to the mouse, but I kept a good eye out to make sure what happened to the seal didn't happen to the mouse. I would feel really bad about that, especially seeing as how that mouse gave me the inspiration to write this little book of poetry regarding some of the stories he shared with me. I asked him if it would be ok to share these tales and he seemed delighted. One of his cousins lives in a library, he shared, and she would probably be delighted to see them in print. Of course a lot of things are in digital these days, but he said that was ok too because it turns out she was also a computer mouse.