Tank and the Mouse

It is amazing how swift the tiniest creature still is!

So Lila remarked to herself after she knew she had just seen a mouse scurrying across the living room.

She had been beguiling the dull, rainy night with her smartphone, scrolling up without any particular aim, not feeling terribly excited about the world, her circumstances, or herself.

But now, suddenly, the most opposite feelings fluttered in her heart.

“That was a mouse, wasn’t it, Tank!” she said starting up, addressing the Jack Russell Terrier curled up at her feet. He must have certainly discerned the intensity in her words because he rose up and raised his right ear.

Both were then still and silent, one fearful, the other vigilant; but hardly three seconds together passed when a rodent left the television console it had slipped under and dashed underneath the coffee table.

Arguably a terrible idea that on the mouse’s part, because now the dog was on its track, alternating between peremptory growling and vicious barking, and Lila now on her feet, rushing for a plan on how to rout the little invader.

Opening the door to her right led out onto the grass fields, but it was raining hard. The forecast called for a downpour throughout the night. She was hesitant in case the water blow in, but it were worse for Tank to bite into the rodent and fall ill as a result; so she sprung to the door and swung it open.

Her design worked out at first, the mouse running outside to save its skin, but her satisfaction was fleeting. Her dog ran out after its ostensible prey, and she was mortified as she lost sight of him in the black, wet night.

Although the cattle ranch on which she lived was moderate in size and pretty much fenced, she remembered there were yet quite a few holes in this fence, holes large enough for Tank to slip through and lose himself in the fields or woods beyond. She snatched up her raincoat hanging by the door, and her smartphone for a flashlight that, with the initial surprise, she had tossed on the couch.

Tank was barking so she had an idea of where to go fortunately as she ran outside. Looking round frantically for her dog, an animal not very bright in color nor big in size, weighing almost over twenty pounds, his coat a thorough gray, she felt quite uneasy.

She wasn’t possessed, strictly speaking, of any phobia of rodents nor of the dark nor of cold rain, but she was a perennial worrier.

It was generally easy for her to imagine all the things that could go wrong, and when her imagination was especially busy in this way, nausea, sweaty palms, and heavy breathing were part and parcel of her experience.

Could we ourselves then imagine how she must feel when, first, Tank’s barks were becoming less in number, and those she heard harder to trace; second, the rain was thickening; and third, a fresh round of thunder began to boom around her, with its lightning rods cleaving the skies in the not very distant distance?

“Tank!” she yelled, slowing down somewhat for confusion, somewhat for despair. “Tank!”

After desperately pronouncing his name a few more times, she was near tears when Tank’s barking seemed to her to be coming now from the direction of their barn. This picked up her confidence if only for a moment.

Their barn was a two-story wooden edifice where her family kept two dozen chickens, along with a host of ranching tools as well as plenty of hay in tall, neat square stacks.

“Tank and the mouse must be in there,” she told herself aloud, hoping that were true and recalling that the two doors to it were typically left a little ajar.

“Oh, but what if that’s just me?” she couldn’t help adding, gritting her teeth without realizing it.

So it was with the greatest relief when, jogging through the opening, she discovered Tank gamboling madly around several haystacks in a corner, most keen on sniffing out the mouse that he appeared positive was sheltering within them.

“Tank, what are you doing!” she cried angrily and picked up the terrier against his will.

Whether because of his mistress’ strict embrace, or the immense thundering outside, or a granting that the mouse had proven himself a very Ulysses, his vicious nature turned more affectionate and meek: He licked Lila’s chin and whimpered.

Mother Nature is wonderfully dreadful in her self-expression, dreadful both in the sense of filling us with veneration and in that of striking us with fright. Our heroine was introduced to the latter likely better than the former when a white javelin of lightning hit the barn.

Sparks, small and large, flew out every which way. The entire barn shook and it was a wonder it was not split in two right on the lightning’s impact. Tank jumped out of his mistress’ arms, and Lila fell to the ground.

One half of the scintillation sizzled for a moment and then vanished, pounded into steam by the rain; the other half of it kindled the roof, but the exposed flames could not resist the thick water.

A handful of sparkles, however, chosen for greater ends, stole beneath towards the supporting beams, and set them ablaze.

It took little for flames to enlarge and then spread through all the wood heretofore dry. By the time Lila recovered herself and fully understood what was happening, blazing debris was already falling on the hay and in turn kindling that.

Tank was barking anew, but not as he did giving chase; his barks were higher-pitched and pitiful cries were mingled among them. “Tank!” she yelled. “Tank!”

Whatever fear she had in respect to the rodent in her living room was a tenth of her fear now, seeing the fire crawl all over the back corner of the barn, and feeling the heat snatching unbearably at her.

Billows of black smoke were also beginning to fill the barn.

“Tank!” she yelled once more, recalling the chickens and then rushing to release them, which no sooner marched out of their pen than, as if out of instinct, fled through the opening towards the cool, moist air.

The chickens safe, Lila turned round and, fortunately, caught sight of her dog.

He was sprinting in circles, stuck by fiery shreds of hay in the corner across the fire. She ran to him, skipping over every spot of flame, and snatched him up.

But she hardly held him when the section of the roof first to light up broke asunder, and came crashing down with cracking rivaling the thunder in the distance.

All this happened so fast that before Lila made sense of it, with the smoke clouding and the fire dazzling her sight, several large splinters of wood fell down in the middle of her way out, and several more threatened to fall.

“We have to go, Tank, and jump over the fire on the ground even if it burns us, or we’re trapped here, and die,” she said aloud to her terrier, although in truth she told herself to gain clarity on her exit plan because vertigo was overtaking her.

At that moment, an awful noise of destruction from above reached her ears.

She looked right up, and knew nigh intuitively the ceiling right over her was on the point of collapsing. And it did! but not before Lila, clutching Tank at her chest, dashed through the barn and past the opening, with the help of such strides and leaps that she lost her balance and tripped into a muddy puddle.

She had scarce lifted herself up when the barn actually collapsed, so immediately and mightily that the surprize pulled her to the ground again. Tank had sprung out of her hands just as she fell the first time and shuffled cheerfully around his mistress.

Together, in the moments following, they observed, half relieved, half impressed, perhaps the human being more so than the hound, as the barn was eaten down and torn to pieces by fire. This, however, vanished almost as quickly as it had arisen, fading away in the presence of merciless rainfall.

Before long, within a couple of peals of thunder, the barn was left entirely a smoldering, soggy, pointed heap of ashes, wood, and cinder.

Exhausted in every sense of the word, Lila lay herself down, caring not the least for getting drenched or for having gotten covered in mud; and as she lay there, soaking in the rain, but more so soaking in the splendid success of her rescue, she dared to consider that she was excited about life again, and wondered why she hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time.

As she lay there, in the moments when she could look up at the gray blanket of clouds grazing against the night sky, when raindrops wouldn’t force her to blink, we could say there was this brilliant, just brilliant light in her eyes, such a light that long since had not been there.

But oh! wait, she had yet one last fright to endure.

Perceiving a series of tickles on her left arm, she turned her attention to them and saw, cooly examining her features, a mouse, and the twin black beads through which it looked made direct contact with her own eyes.

“Ah!” she screamed, as loudly as she had not yet done all night, starting up. And once she was standing, she thought to see the mouse scurrying away among the puddles and the spots of grass, into the black, wet night.