Twice or Thrice the Mice Would Suffice

Prologue

A female mouse has the potential to survive in the wild (or even in an improvised cage in a Grade 8 classroom) for about 2 years. The gestation period for this female mouse, if she becomes pregnant (rather, when she becomes pregnant), is about 20 days. The nursing period for each litter of pups (yes, baby mice are referred to as pups) is about 15 days. Ultimately, this means that a single female mouse can become pregnant as many as 10 times in one year. Each pregnancy can yield as many as 6 pups. A quick calculation at this point, places the number of offspring that one female can produce in her lifetime, at about 120. Each litter of pups would normally have a likelihood of producing 3 females, which themselves would begin ovulating at about 8 weeks after birth, and at which time, they will likely become pregnant and bring three more litters of mouse pups into the world, 20 short days after that. Within the life span of one pair of mating mice and in the year following their death, the number of mice that could be produced by them and all of their offspring and all of their offspring’s offspring, and so on, would hover around the 7200 mark. Whoa! With that in mind, let’s begin our story.

Day ZERO

Imagine, if you will, a fairly spacious classroom within a tiny brick school, in a medium-sized rural community, somewhere on the terrestrial surface of a smallish blue planet, orbiting an average-sized yellow dwarf star, in the middle of one of the outer arms of a spiral galaxy, about 13.7 billion light-years from the centre of the universe. In this spacious classroom, works a teacher. The teacher, whom we shall refer to as Mr. Elroy Jones, is an aficionado of the maths and the sciences. He is as well-versed in the body of knowledge surrounding space and the universe, as he is about the physics of sub-atomic particles, as he is about the science of matter, as he is about the workings of the human body, and as he is about the interconnectedness of life on the planet. He is also more than proficient at manipulating the values and variables within mathematical equations and function graphs to help explain these many worlds of science. His students rotate into, and circulate about, his classroom each day with deep enthusiasm and anticipation of the things they may discover about their magical state of existence. Each class period begins with a question from Mr. Jones – a question which cannot possibly be answered. That, however, never seems to stop the students from attempting to answer it. Mr. Jones then proceeds to ask further questions which inevitably bring his students closer to a possible theory, or at least a speculation about the essence of truth. At the end of the class periods, his students gather their belongings and file out of his classroom, occasionally less certain about how they came to be, and why.

One day, one of Mr. Jones’s students began the class by raising her hand.

She stood beside her desk, which was the practice, and started, “Today Mr. Jones, I have a question for you.”

Delighted to have a student wishing to pose a question at the beginning of the class, Mr. Jones asked, “Yes, yes, please. And, what is your question?”

The girl replied, “Well, I have these three pet mice you see, and my mother is afraid of mice and she is worried that they will get out of the cage I have them in at home, and thus, end up being loose in the house. She wants me to get rid of them. So, I want to know, if I let them go outside, will they survive or will they just die?”

Mr. Jones interjected quickly at this point, “Before you go on, I need to know if this is a theoretical question or indeed, a query about an actual situation that is happening in your life?”

“Oh, it’s very real sir. My mom has basically told me that it’s either me or the mice. I know for sure that I wouldn’t survive outside of my home so, I'd like to know if the mice will survive when I throw them outside.”

Mr. Jones turned his back to the students for a moment and performed a few mathematical calculations on the blackboard. He muttered aloud as he proceeded, “F of X over the square of Y, quantity squared and where X is equal to . . . “ and then he turned momentarily back to his young student, “How many mice did you say there were?”

“Three sir,” she answered back.

Mr. Jones continued, “ . . . and where X is equal to 3 and where Y is the product of 10Cx, should give us the likelihood of their survival . . . er . . . and that is . . . well, it seems they would, with almost one hundred per cent certainty . . . be doomed.”

A murmur spread through the classroom. Several of the other students talked amongst themselves and then finally, one of them raised his hand.

“And what is your question, Clarence?” asked Mr. Jones.

To which Clarence replied, “Well, you see sir, there is a lot of room in this classroom and you do have some empty aquariums in the back storage rooms that are not being used for fish. So, we were thinking that maybe . . . well . . .”

“Yes, yes, get on with it then. What are you trying to say?” hurried Mr. Jones.

“Well maybe you could adopt the mice into this classroom. You know, so they wouldn’t have to go outside and die a cold, miserable death at the forked tongue of a snake or the fangs of a coyote or the claws of a feral cat or the . . .”

“OK, OK, OK!!! I get the picture.” Mr. Jones interrupted, “I see where you are going with this.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes. He raised one hand to the bridge of his nose. Finally he looked up at young Clarence and declared, “Alright, I will agree to take the mice into the classroom, if you and the rest of the students in this class will agree to feed the mice and clean out their cages whenever the need arises.”

The students all jumped to their feet and stood beside their desks and clapped their hands and cheered loudly at the news. Mr. Jones opened the back storage room and the kids found the unused aquariums and brought them out to one of the many countertops in the room. They rolled up their sleeves and began the cleaning. Then they dried them with cheesecloth towels so that the glass was extra clean and bright. The students found some plastic jar lids for holding oatmeal and water inside the enclosures. They also came across some bags of wood shavings and sawdust, that they used as bedding for the soon-to-be guests. Everything was set. Mr. Jones constructed some wooden “rooftops” for each of the aquariums, to ensure that the mice would not escape in search of “staycation” homes elsewhere in the classroom.

Day ONE

The next day, the mice arrived at school in an empty peanut butter jar with air-holes poked in the lid. Mr. Jones carefully placed the jar into one of the enclosures and then neatly secured the wooden lid back on top of the aquarium. All of the students in the class were perched in strategic positions here and there around the side counter, in efforts to observe the first sign of life emerging from the peanut butter jar. Eventually, all three of the mice poked out their wiggling and whiskery little noses and, made their way into the luxurious confines (for a mouse anyway) of the aquarium. They darted here and there around the water dish and the food platform. They dug and scurried in and under and over and through the wood shavings. Before the end of the class period, all three mice had disappeared into the debris that was now their home.

Day TWO

During the Grade 8 class the next morning, many of the students wandered to and fro from their desks and over to the aquarium at the side of the room, to check on the activities of the mice. Discussions surrounding the origins of the universe and the contributions made by the sub-atomic particles therein, ground to a standstill whenever a mouse was spotted by one of the nearby students.

Day 16

The mice seemed very comfortable in their new home. Food and water dishes were being cleaned and refilled on a daily basis. The mice were ‘out and about’ more often now – feeling more comfortable in their new homes I suppose. Because they were seen by the students on a regular basis, the kids eventually were able to tell them apart – so the new pets received names. There was a big one that was easy to recognize because of its size and distinct markings. It looked like a painted pony. This one was called ‘PATCHES’. The other two were just regular greyish-brown mice. However, one of them was missing an eye – possibly lost in a battle back in the day, or possibly the result of a birth defect of some sort. Anyway, that one was called, creatively enough, ‘LONG JOHN SILVER’. The remaining mouse was simply named ‘GREY’, with the option to be renamed later should a suitable moniker ever arise. By Day 16, a distinct ‘mousey’ odor could be detected when standing near to the aquarium housing the mice. Windows in the classroom were opened during part of the school day to dilute the aroma somewhat. Plans were made by Mr. Jones and his students to do some cleaning of the cages at the beginning of the next week.

Day 18

That day was cleaning day. Mr. Jones had rounded up a few extra bags of wood shavings from a wood-worker in the area. A father of one of Mr. Jones’s students was a farmer. He contributed some extra grain and seeds to the class as feed for the mice. The students removed the mice from the aquarium by hand and held them while others in their class emptied the soiled wood-shavings into black garbage bags. The three mice were very content to climb up and down on the bare arms or shirt sleeves of the students and into the collars of their hooded jackets while their homes were being cleaned. Some students laid on the floor and let the mice walk all over their outstretched bodies. The class period was nearly finished by the time the cleaning project had been completed. Mr. Jones thought about how the students would eventually get better at those chores and that soon they would be able to perform them in a matter of minutes, allowing everyone to get back to their studies of particle physics and the like.

Day 24

It was announced by the first student in the room that morning, that one of the mice must have been pregnant. A litter of baby mice was spotted, wiggling around in one of the exposed mouse-made habitat-bubbles now visible through the aquarium glass. There appeared to be five or six new pups. Grey, in fact, was the mother. It was on Day 24 that ‘Grey’ was at last renamed by the students. She was from that day forward known as ‘LA MERE’. Patches and Long John Silver kept their distance from the new mother over the next few days and seemed quite happy to do so. Apparently, at least one of them was a male.

Day 40

There was a much-heightened degree of activity in the aquarium now that the 6 new members of the family added their numbers to the group. The fragrance of mice, which never really left the classroom now, also wafted well into the hallway outside. This smell needed to be alleviated by opening all windows 24-7 and through cage-cleaning done on a bi-weekly basis.

Day 58

La Mere blessed the classroom with a second litter of mouse pups on that morning and it appeared that she was very much enjoying her new surroundings because she had upped her fertility by a notch, and delivered 7 new babies this time. Mr. Jones found it difficult to stay on track with his scheduled classes. He was falling further and further behind with his teaching of content. It was taking longer to clean out the aquarium and that job had to be completed on a more frequent basis. It was on this day that Mr. Jones and his students decided to increase the size of the living space for their pet mice. There were 16 mice, that they knew of, now inhabiting the one aquarium. If they were to somehow divide up the mice so that they had more room, perhaps the cleaning time and frequency could be cut back a little. Mr. Jones worried though that, in the division of the mice into two homes, he may be separating important family members from one another in the process. It is with that in mind, that he came up with the idea of not only having two homes for the mice but that they would be connected by a bridge, constructed from 50 feet of 3-inch diameter, clear vinyl tubing! Now, 50 feet of vinyl tubing carries with it, a hefty price tag. So, Mr. Jones was forced to spend a big chunk of his Science Budget in order to purchase it. When the tubing was finally installed, there was a bridge that rose up, on a gradual slant, from the original aquarium, to the junction of the side wall and the ceiling, around the top of the wall to the front of the classroom, across the entire front wall to the window-wall, along half of the window wall and then down with a gentle slope to an aquarium on the other side of the room. He also used his variable-speed drill to punch holes in the vinyl tubing so that the tube would be adequately ventilated with fresh breathable air as the mice made their journey across time and space.

Day 62

The population of mice in the original aquarium was increasing with each passing day. La Mere was pregnant again, as were most, if not all of her children, and he grandchildren. By some counts, the number of mice now stood well above 50. Feeding was a twice-daily task and cage-cleaning had been upped to once per week. Math and Science classes had been reduced to mere calculating the exponential growth of unchecked populations and the social behaviors of overpopulated groups. It had been over a week since the vinyl bridge had been put in place by Mr. Jones and his students, but as yet, no mouse had made the entire sojourn from Cage #1 to Cage #2. Yes, some had gone part-way up the first ramp and investigated the terrain to that point, but none had continued the journey to the other side. Mr. Jones prayed for the possibility at least, that some of the more curious mice would return to their friends with speculation of a brave new world out there beyond the meager existence of their present home. On day 62, however, one courageous little mouse, which the students aptly named, ‘VASCO DE GAMA’, began a solo trip which eventually took him from one side of the room to the other. The mathematics class that morning was put on hold, as both students and teacher looked on, with the same degree of anticipation and excitement that one might offer while viewing a space shuttle-launch or a moon-landing on television. There were no words to describe the explosion of jubilation that burst through that crowd of onlookers as Vasco de Gama stepped foot on foreign sawdust for the first time. The shock-wave of cheering must have reached his tiny ears because at that moment of conquest, he stood on his miniature back feet and waved his petite front paws high into the air. The stage had finally been set for the exploration and settling of new terrain.

Day 67

Vasco de Gama did not return to Cage #1 for some time after his initial journey, so the word of the new territory did not spread immediately. He perhaps basked in his glory or maybe he was simply relieved to see the hub-bub of his former crowded life in the rear-view-mirror. But, on Day 67, he did return. And, it was only moments after his return that he sailed again for Cage #2. This time, however, he was followed by no fewer than 5 of his comrades. Some of them returned and told others, and within the week, all of the adult mice were travelling freely back and forth between the two aquariums.

Day 91

The mouse population in Mr. Jones’s classroom had now grown to over 100. Several other aquariums were added to the complex housing arrangements. More vinyl tubing was purchased and more bridges were built. One morning during a mathematics class, Mr. Jones’s students looked up above his head at the front of the room and started to laugh. Two mice were mating, as it appeared, right on top of the maximum point of a graphed periodic function. Only seconds later, a third mouse joined the act. And, then a fourth and a fifth, and more and more, until finally the students were witnessing a writhing, twisting ball of rodent fornication, right there in front of them. There was squeaking and hissing and little mouse screams echoing through the vinyl tubing. The chaos and bedlam seemed to entice more of the little creatures into the orgy. Mice pushed their feces out of the air holes in the vinyl bridge as they copulated. The poop was falling onto Mr. Jones’s head as he attempted to teach. The mouse situation it seems, had taken a turn for the worse.

Day 121

This was a morning of reckoning for Mr. Jones and his students. Cage cleaning and feeding had become a deeply troublesome burden, and was looked forward to by no one. Population numbers were sky-rocketing at a truly alarming rate. There were new litters arriving every day. Mating balls were, at minimum, a twice-daily occurrence. Mouse poop was falling like snowflakes on the mountain ranges they created on the classroom floor beneath every vinyl bridge in the room. The mice were growing restless. They had begun fashioning weapons from the larger bits of wood shavings and in fact, from their own feces. Mr. Jones knew that he must do something to ‘break the wheel’. However, it would all have to wait, as the next day was the beginning of the school Spring Break. Mr. Jones had booked a flight to Florida where he hoped to benefit from some sun and from some much-needed time away. He emptied the last of the cereal grain into the cages, now-scattered around his classroom. He replenished the water supply for the mice and pulled down the shades along the window wall, turned off the lights, walked out and closed and locked the door behind him.

Day 132

As Mr. Elroy Jones’s return flight from Florida landed, he felt a ripple in the normal calm fabric of the universe. He sensed that the galaxy he had once called his own, had tilted slightly, causing tremors in the complexity of the solar system. The prevailing winds that had been so familiar to him all of his life, had increased in velocity, indicating that the rotation of the earth had been somehow altered. He tried to push aside the notion of any sort of problem. He walked purposefully from the terminal building and located his car in the long-term parking lot at the airport, and started his drive back to his little community. As he got closer, he discovered that many roads had been severely damaged, large chunks of pavement had crumpled from the highways, buildings had toppled and trees were uprooted. When he finally neared the twisted shell of a structure that had once been his school, he slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt. He stared through his windshield in shock and disbelief. A tear welled-up and overflowed down his right cheek. The world, and indeed the universe, as he had known it, was about to change forever. For there in front of him, crossing the highway was the unmistakable evidence. Four over-sized, seasoned guerilla warriors, were locked, loaded and ready to wreck havoc on anyone and anything that should cross their paths. He readied himself, and kept one foot on the brake pedal. The other foot pressed down on the accelerator as far as he could manage to press it. His back tires smoked and squealed as his car writhed in place, from side to side. He had but one chance to save his school, his planet and in all likelihood, the universe. Mr. Elroy Jones did then what he had to do. He had to rid the world of these four mercenaries, and he had to do it right then and there. He popped his left foot off of the brake pedal and the front end of the car lifted off the ground and shot forward. He aimed directly at the four menacing figures flashing their evil and ever-lasting denta rodentia smiles.

He knew them only too well – and in fact, was able to bid them farewell individually and by name as they caromed off the chrome of his front bumper – “THUMP, so long LONG JOHN SILVER. THUMP, THUMP, adieu PATCHES and LA MERE. And good-bye to you, THUMP, VASCO DE GAMA. If only you had used your powers for good instead of evil,” he shouted, as he raised a clenched fist and cursed their disfigured and dismembered little carcasses.