Animals: Brisbane’s Mouse

Baldish, button-chinned Arthur Brisbane leads a quiet life consisting mostly of reading, writing and real estate. But lately he had an experience which moved him deeply. In the pantry of his house he came upon a mouse caught in a trap. Next day he made eight paragraphs out of the incident, some of the best he ever wrote, for his Hearst colyum. Arthur Brisbane’s mouse story:

“The fight against death, the intense will to live, in so-called lower animals, is impressive. Under the pantry sink is a small piece of board, and on it, a trigger with cheese attached, and a strong spring that brings down violently a piece of wire running crosswise of the mousetrap.

“The trap has been sprung, a mouse is caught, the wire pressing with cruel force across its backbone, just above the hind legs. The front legs, neck, head and shoulders are free.

“When light is turned on, the helpless creature that has been struggling desperately, perhaps for hours, becomes quiet, no sign of life except the brightness of its eyes.

“It cannot be left to suffer all night, until some servant shall dispose of it. You lift the trap and the creature, back broken, raises on its fore legs, biting in all directions, seeking to reach the hand that would end its misery. Placed, with the trap on a whisk broom, for convenient carrying, its little teeth bite fiercely at the broom.

“Its greatest show of courage and resistance comes when it is placed in a pail of water, and held down, beneath the narrow wooden board.

“It whirls and turns, struggles with its free fore feet, forces its angry head above the water time and again. No human being, no Crillon or Du Guesclin,* could offer equal resistance to inevitable fate.

“And when you think the end has come and the formidable task of destroying a mouse has been accomplished, the struggle begins again as desperately as before, until at last death takes back the determined little life that nature has created.

“No Marmion,† with his ‘Charge, Chester, charge; on, Stanley, on,’ could die more bravely than that fragment of mouse ‘consciousness.’ “

The Brisbanal moral:

“If it is so difficult, psychologically to kill a helpless mouse, how do those natives of northern India and other savages of similar kind, kill their girl babies? . . . etc. etc. etc.”

*Louis Balbis de Berton de Crillon (1543-1615) French soldier, called by Henry IV “the bravest of the brave.” He served under Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX as well as Henrys III and IV. He was not present at and strongly condemned the massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572), which was instigated by King Charles’s mother, Catherine de’ Medici. The famed Paris hotel on La Place de la Concorde was named for him. Bertrand Du Guesclin (1320 -1380), constable of France, was the most famed French warrior of his age. He fought in the wars between France and England, was made a lord, a count, was ransomed for 100,000 crowns following the battle of Auray, died on the field of battle.

†of Sir Walter Scott’s poem “Marmion” (1808), valiant English battler against the Scots on Flodden Field (1503).