Big White Mouse
The big white mouse on his way to new beginnings.
“Take the raccoons further,” she says. “To the Wank,” she says. The Wank is the West Bank of New Orleans, unless you are born there, in which case it becomes the best bank, likely listed on maps and in guidebooks as the West Bank, which one can get to from New Orleans by driving East. That said, it is on the west bank of the Mississippi River.
Wank also means to rub one out. Which means to masturbate. I believe that rub one out also means murder, means to make disappear, means to take in a trunk to parts unknown. To kill. How one could kill a cuddly creature like a possum or raccoon is beyond me. And I know you can’t really cuddle with them. They’re just so damn cute.
This story is not about land or murder.
This story is about the raccoons that ate all of my paw paws last year and got a pretty good start on the persimmons. This story is about how only a couple of days ago an old friend reached out and said that her dad had died suddenly, had been gone for only three days, and that during his lifetime he made a sort of hobby out of catching raccoons and squirrels which he would relocate to the land out around Boomtown Casino.
This story is about beginnings. This story is as yet unfinished. As is everything.
The woman who said to take the raccoons further is my fiance. She did not think that my bringing the possum to a wooded area in the Lower 9th Ward was far away. She said he would come back. I told her he would have to cross over a bridge or swim across the river. I thought he would be good on that side.
The truth is that I will miss him.
I like to see him outside. I like the memory of the first time she saw him and shouted from the kitchen, “Honey, there is a big white mouse outside.”
I feel devious having loaded up the trap with french fries from Melba’s Po Boys. It hurt to watch the way he struggled until I got him into the truck. He stopped struggling. He lay down to sleep, for it was daylight. And when I tapped on the cage, he just looked up at me as if to say, “What happened between us? You’re the one who fed me.” He did not know that the trap was not meant for him.
I don't even know if possums eat paw paws. I don’t even know how to write the plural of opossum or whether or not there should be an o. The wild world, even in the city, allows new approaches and vast curiosity if you let it.
My hope is that the raccoons would have gone into the same trap, but the big white mouse got there first.
In one internet report, the writer says that raccoons are fond of marshmallows. In this they are united with alligators. Tonight I will again try as bait the french fries from Melba’s. I will use what I have and only buy marshmallows if necessary.
I will remember seeing the wetness of the fur on the feet of the big white mouse, how I knew he had pissed himself, how I was responsible for that. And, finally, I will remember the feeling of the big white mouse running free from the cage, down the road, and into the woods of the Lower 9th Ward.
