Deborah Lipp

Mighty Mighty Mingo is a Mighty Mighty Mouser (no pictures). We’ve discussed this before. A couple of days ago, Arthur said he saw Mingo with a dead mouse, but he didn’t know where the body was.

I wasn’t worried, I figured it would turn up, and sure enough, when I came downstairs this morning, there it was, all gray and dead on the living room floor. So I went to get a plastic bag to put it in, and another to wrap my hand in while handling it, and I came back.

And froze.

I don’t know. I was suddenly confronted with the unknowability of death. The blank space of it. And for a moment, I simply couldn’t touch it. I’ve cleaned up little post-cat corpses before, I’ve never felt that, but suddenly it was something untouchable.

So that took a few seconds, and I shook it off, and lifted it by the tail, but there it was again. How heavy and stiff the little body was. Probably 2 inches long, not counting the tail, and it felt like it weighed a pound (which is ridiculous), and I thought how much lighter life is than death.

And then, y’know, wrapped it in plastic and threw it away and moved the fuck on. Because my morning need not be about ruminations on mortality. It is much better for it to be about cleaning up the mess in the living room.