Mouse Tales

It got cold here last week, colder than it’s been all fall and winter.  And Lunenburg, like so many other prisons Virginia built during the heyday “money to burn” days of the ‘90s, when “lock em all up” was the mantra, is smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

Virginia State Government sold a number of rural Virginia counties on the idea that putting a prison in your county would generate enormous financial benefits.  Instead of real efforts to attract businesses and improve public services and schools, these counties bought the state’s line and watched as prison after prison went up in little crossroad burgs and villes across the Commonwealth.  But, unlike “Field of Dreams”, after they built it, the only things that came were the hundreds and thousands of convicted felons.  Those who were drug users brought their Hepatitis C and HIV and dozens of other diseases.  Twenty percent brought serious psychiatric and mental health disorders.  And the communities:  They stayed the same:  poor, higher unemployment, higher dropout rates than the metro areas. 

But this isn’t an “I told you so blog”.  I feel empathy for the small towns and rural counties.  I only wish the politicians in Richmond would be honest with them.  Anyway, this is a story about a mouse; and, there’s another story told me by a friend/college student named – coincidentally, “Mouse”.

So it got cold here, real cold.  And Lunenburg is built in the middle of nothing but swampy, low lying fields with acres of hardwood surrounding it.  The place is overrun with field mice.  Going to chow at night you see dozens scurrying across the walks.  The hawks fly overhead looking for that one slow mouse to grab.

The mice, meanwhile, huddle up against the buildings and wait, wait for the door to pop so they can run into the heat and food of the building.  While 4A is a dump to us, to a field mouse it’s a garden, a Garden of Eden.

But, we all know what happened in the Garden of Eden:  Adam and Eve were put out.  And so it goes with the field mice.  Last week, three times we’d see a mouse scurry across the ceiling beams, or out of a sloppy guy’s locker.  The mice take us all in rather nonchalantly.  Not so with some of the hardened cons in here.  I’ve seen “grown ass” men squeal like little girls when a tiny field mouse would run by.  And the female officers?  Couldn’t get ‘em out of the booth while a mouse was loose.

I’m happy to report all three mice were captured and all three were freed.  After all, even convicts, maybe especially convicts, know all God’s creatures deserve to be free.
Then there’s my friend “Mouse”, a pip-squeak little guy I’ve written about before.   Mouse is going home in 60 days, home with an Associate’s degree and admission already to a four year Virginia University.

Mouse used to smoke a lot of weed – before his current ten year bid.  He found a great job, but the employer required a urine sample.  He knew his was dirty, so he asked his fiancé.  “It was cold Larry, real cold, and I’d left it in the car.”  His solution?  Stop at a convenience store and heat the sample in the microwave.

“I left it in too long.  It almost boiled.”  He was headed to work and couldn’t turn in a scorching hot sample so he paced back and forth at the lab facility allowing everyone else to go before him.  Going into the restroom, he poured the sample into the lab container.

“Are you feeling alright sir?” the nurse accepting the sample asked.  “Why you must be burning up.  Your sample is very warm.”

Two weeks pass at work and Mouse is suddenly called into the HR office.  “We have to let you go.”  “Why?” Mouse asked.  “We know you used someone else’s sample.”  Mouse thought for a moment then decided to carry the story forward.

“I can’t believe you’re accusing me of that”, he said with indignation and offense.

“Perhaps we’re being too hasty”, the HR director said. “Oh.  Congratulations.”

“I have the job?” Mouse said.  “No.  You’re expecting.”

I can’t make stuff like this up!