There's a Mouse In The House!

Mice: the animals which stereotypically frighten housewives and terrify elephants. While the house mouse is probably the species which immediately comes to mind at the mention of the word, there are actually many types of mice. There are deer mice (shown at the right), grasshopper mice, harvest mice, meadow mice, and Mickey Mice. I even featured a deer mouse in an earlier article (see “The Terror By Night”, June 6, 2007)

The summer between my sophomore and junior years in college was spent at the Rosario Beach Marine Station (see photo at “When the Waves Get Too Big”, August 1, 2007). The station is on a small bay facing west, and has a small island in the opening. When I was there, the island had significant stands of prickly pear cactus and hordes of deer mice. I spent a large number of afternoons trying to verify the idea that the mouse population could have come from mice stranded on drifting debris which reached the island. After drifting around the bay for up to four hours, three of my twenty navigators were able to get within 5 feet of the goal line. Only one abandoned ship early in the procedure.

But let’s move on to the house mouse. First of all, it is nowhere as cute as the deer mouse. Dingy gray, compared to the nice, neat two-colored coat of the other. It has been in close association with man since time immemorial. The sight of one in the house can bring on a variety of responses: anger, fear, disgust, embarrassment, even dread. They chew on things, they get into things, and they soil things. No one wants a house mouse around.

I started thinking about mice, and realized I really didn’t remember any mention of them in the Bible. We all know to go to the ant, that leopards can’t change their spots, and camels can’t pass through needles' eyes. Dogs eat crumbs from the masters’ tables, and oxen fall into the ditch and are used as excuses not to attend banquets. Fish provide temple tax money; whales redirect wayward prophets, ravens feed repentant prophets, and donkeys can talk.

But what about mice? To my mind, they should be an excellent symbol of sin. Just think of it. They slip into our lives so easily; unless we are really watchful, they can reside with us without our even knowing it. Every mouse that gets into the house must be a pregnant female; if one mouse gets in and isn’t immediately removed, others soon come exploding out of closets, from under beds and behind refrigerators. Let one sin into your life, and if it isn’t removed quickly, others follow in its path.

A single sin can eat you up, destroy what you have. How fitting, I thought, for a mouse. So I decided to look in my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. The word mouse appears twice; the Bible lacks the word mice (that’s as close as this blog gets to poetry). The two passages where we find this creature are Lev. 11:29-35 and Isaiah 66:17. And guess what the Lord says about the mouse: it is unclean, and its dead body contaminates (defiles) anything it touches. In other words, the mouse does symbolize or represent sin.

To be sure we are rid of mice and sin, we need an exterminator. Praise the Lord, there is One!

By the way, have you been nibbling my cookie, or should I look behind the couch?

Dr. G