Probably nobody could be more grateful to mice than us, the small family who reached a level of understanding and love among all its members that it seemed to be unthinkable a few years ago. And everything thanks to the effort well focused on mice.
My son was in charge of their hatchery, basing on his enthusiasm and with the combination of several techniques .He had in mind a chart of age for the matings, their endurance to poisons, a more and more demanding system of rations and a very documented experiment of crosses of different varieties. He carried it on with such an awareness that, every time I thought about it, seemed to be more decidedly admirable.
The two storeys of our house were almost completely full of metal cages. The mice on the first one were the oldest ones, six weeks old and ready to the stage of reproduction ; the mice on the second floor were newborns or still being breast-fed. In our food we invariably included, mixed with leather and the vegetables, a dust of concrete with which we hoped to achieve the adaptation of the stomach and, besides, the mouse with top effectiveness. The ration could not neglect , as far as mortality made it possible, the own flesh of mice, that, according to my son, was able to develop the most effective powers of that species intended to control the `planet.
The cages were too small to allow other possible movements, only to eat and to pair, or to eat each other, when this was suitable for the cultivation of fierceness.. They eat only half of the other and they die together, the part of the body which is missing inside the other´s body. .My son always said that that was what happened when two mice, which had had no food for several days, went together into a single cage. Two ones which were jaded were also put together in a cage , but to breed.
My son´s plan consisted in filling with mice the part of the city which was still alive, contributing to carry on the complete extermination of human race .It was suitable to start letting the mice free in libraries, shops, supermarkets and stationery. To do this, people should already be immune to the poisons from hardware and pharmacies, of which there was an innumerable variety but that my son, after his studies and experience, reduced to two kinds: the ones coming from strychnine, and the ones from Pasteur´s virus.
My son´s strategy left no loose ends; he organized squads from the different specialties trusting on the grey rat for the destruction of the drains, sewers and foundations; the black rat would undermine the junction of the buildings; the mouse from the woods would be the owner of the terraces and he gave to the Olympic white mouse , the flags of the always current black death and hantavirus. The mood of The Crusaders in the Middle Age should not be different; head up and my son´s brilliant look. On the header of his bed he had this legend written with careful gothic handwriting.:
The rat is the destruction
Horapolo 1-50
that he had found in a book about the Egyptians when he was reading, as usual, everything that arrived to his hand about death. He lived euphorically, as if he was fulfilling something cherished for a long time. His mother, his brothers and me, we helped him with the cleaning because , although we were used to it, the smell was so unbearable as the cleaning of the double row of shelves was endless. I cannot deny that, in spite of the difference between my wife and my other two sons who did it just to cooperate with Venancio and take him far from being depressed, I felt curiously comforted and with the feeling of participating in something which was undoubtedly important.
Neither his mother, nor his brothers or me, could forget when Venancio who was five years old then, told us that his godfather had hurt him. My wife¨s brother had raped him in our own house. My wife drew away from her whole family, when they did not react as they should have, sentencing the degenerate. We lived isolated .And I was always having the nightmare of the death I had not committed and that I should have ,at that moment. There are some moments during the day when my revenge returns to me with details that my cowardice is improving in the air. But I did not do anything.
My memory spent the time revising the facts, tormenting me. I can almost say that the degenerate¨s figure deleted long periods of my life. I took notes in a notebook that I kept hidden, about how I would kill him, his son and his friends. I did not mind all the sacrifice I would have to endure if in the end I could kill him slowly. And the final strategy which seemed to me the most enjoyable one was the splendid medieval invention of the bell with a rat inside on his belly. When I lost the notebook where I had written down these things, I continued thinking about my revenge in the dreams and finally I forgot everything working effectively in the organization of the hatchery.
Together with my wife and my other sons we dedicated to serve Venancio. He could enjoy raising rabbits, cats, birds,, but always one at a time, like pets. It was a way of supplying loneliness, because he did not like playing with other children. But he abandoned all the other animals when he started with the mice.
From my point of view Venancio became a virtuous in the breeding of mice. A few days ago he started something that seems wise to me but it worries his mother because she thinks she can see some symptoms of unbalance: he distributed three wooden cages with canaries at a careful distance from the breeding cages. Mice need music-he explained-and they know how to imitate canaries. This seems to me a remarkable tactic. I do not think I care about the house full of singing, but we are providing the mice with a more effective way of communication.
We all agreed to roof the terrace for an expansion that both Venancio¨s enthusiasm and his general plan really deserved it.. We could not go on with the sleights of place that we did to our own place in the rooms. Sometimes we came over our rooms with cages, also the kitchen and the bathroom and we had nowhere else to put them. With the adequacy of the terrace we would be able to get six annual litters, something which was not so simple when they are in captivity. Before giving each step, my son consulted a notebook that he kept as a relic. In his room there was no space for a single cage, but he enjoyed hanging a real mural with radiological plates of mice and of human beings on his bedhead.
I do not remember a happier time in my relation with my sons than the one when we roofed the terrace. I saw Venancio with a vitality and security of himself , which are own of the person who builds his house with his own hands. More than one hundred of square metres soon became a rectangular maze of an aisle that gave four laps over itself.
Not many days ago, I was surprised again by my son. He told me that when the first floor was ready he was going to have a massive release. I questioned him. He explained that on Christmas he was going to empty the three floors and I answered that such a generous release was not going to be replaced in a short time.
-It is necessary that some of them pave the way with their bodies- he recited looking up.
And he continued, but separating the syllables:
-Have you already forgotten what you wrote in the notebook?,
Traslated: Teresita Barreiro
1