Taming of the Shrew

I think I'm gaining some supernatural ability to gain the trust of animals. It has resulted in tragedy. Last night Isabel, the cleaning lady came to me with a teensy-tiny little baby rat she had caught. I assume it was a baby rat, though it may have been a full-grown shrew. In fact, I just Google image searched "shrew" and yep, that's what it was. Well, at least I'm not a baby killer. Anyhow Isabel came to me with it and I was like, aaaaw, it's so little, and it was funny, it crawled onto my hand and up my arm and around my back, not really fast or anything, almost friendly-like, but then it wanted to escape into my sleeves, that's where I drew the line. So I took it outside and I couldn't let it go because it would just come back in the building the same way it got in in the first place, so I figured I'd walk a ways and let it go, but nowhere seemed far enough, and I couldn't risk afflicting my innocent, sleeping senior citizens with a Shrew in their garage. All this time I kept the little Shrew busy by switching hands as he ran across one to the other to the other. He seemed to catch on that my hands were a little more clever than he, and soon he settled into a squished little squat in one palm, undoubtedly contemplating how to get back to the bread-crumbed heaven he once knew.

Well, things were looking grim. I imagined all the ways to kill a shrew in the most painless manner. He was going to have to die, you can't just let pests like that go, they just come back. But I just didn't have the heart. Not after he'd shown me his humanity. I can't even step on an ant if I watch it stumbling around in circles too long. So I turned around and unlocked my Mini-van. Inside I found an empty Kirkland Choice water bottle. Perfect. I opened the bottle with one hand, the shrew sitting obediently in my left palm, and slipped him inside. He didn't really know how he felt about that, and made a few feeble attempts to scale the sides of the bottle. But the slippery slopes of Mt. Plastic kept him at the bottom. I brought the bottle inside to the main office to look for something to poke holes in the top of the lid with. I passed David, Isabel's brother, I told him, "They can kill him in the morning if they want, I didn't have the guts to do it." He shrugged and kept vacuuming. In the office I poked a couple holes in the lid with a big pair of scissors and for good measure slipped in a Kleenex. I figured he could make a bed, or eat it or something. I really don't know much about Shrews.

Back at my desk I wrote on an index card to leave at the front desk for whoever came in in the morning, "Isabel (the cleaning lady) caught a little friend, I have him/her in an empty water bottle. It's a shrew, or a baby rat or a very, very small black bear. I've decided to name him 'Andre the Giant.' -Safety Patrol Bill." Andre scurried around in circles in his new home while I finished a flipbook. He came with me on my next patrol, I hung his bottle from the rearview mirror with an old air freshener elastic. He would gnaw on the tissue and then try to jump to the top of the bottle. I thought maybe the tissue was his normal food source and he was energizing himself. I thought about the novelty of a pet shrew, and the likelihood of taming it. I figured there probably wasn't a lower maintenance pet in Washington. Just drop a square of Charmin in his cage once a day and he does the rest.

On my next patrol I left him on my desk, convinced now that he was unable to chew through the bottle, or somehow roll it to freedom. But I got anxious halfway through my tour, and stopped at the Club house again to check on him. He hadn't escaped. I had turned off the lights and he decided it was night time so he'd curled up in the tissue bed. Ha! I knew he'd like that. So I finished my patrol and came back. I put some finishing touches on my flipbook around 3:40am. I tried to work quietly so I wouldn't wake up Andre. It occurred to me that Shrews must be pretty light sleepers in general, but Andre was zonked out, no doubt the result of a valiant struggle to reach the top of his 20oz Townhome. Or was he? I turned the bottle a little. He didn't wake up. My stomach sank. Oh, no. I turned the bottle sideways and my little friend Andre rolled stiffly out of his Kleenex bed and plunked against the side. I sighed. This is why I can't have nice things.

I took back the index card and wrote on a new one, "Isabel (the cleaning lady) caught a little friend. It was a shrew, or a baby rat, or a very, very small black bear. I've decided to name him 'Andre the Giant.' May he rest in peace." I left the note card sticking up in the front desk keyboard like a little college-ruled tombstone, and gave Andre a brief funeral service outside by the waste basket. As near as I can figure it, I didn't make the holes big enough and Andre just fell asleep, only to wake up in that great, big, bread-crumbed main office in the sky.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed in myself. After all, Shrews are about the lowest maintenance pets in Washington, and I'd killed mine in less than four hours. But I think it was an answer to a prayer—actually, I really do. Because I didn't want to kill it in some gruesome way, and I knew I couldn't keep it (see: gross). So, it simply fell asleep, to dream of dreams eternal.