Mice or Mouses?

Years ago, when I lived in the country by myself, I had to lay down the law for mice. One can’t help liking these little creatures, until one sees the havoc they can create.

Yesterday a piece of chocolate left over from an Easter egg displayed a series of tooth marks on one edge. Aha! Obviously, we had an unwanted guest. A trap, but not of the killing kind, was set and this morning my son went out into the foggy street with the cage and its inhabitant and moved the tiny guest – well it wasn’t really all that tiny – to another home, hoping he/she would stay there.  Was ours a country mouse or a town mouse as in the fables of La Fontaine or Aesop’s fable? Presumably the former although to judge from its liking for chocolate it might very well have been a town mouse as pictured in a book I have kept over the years, a gift from French friends of my family with wonderful illustrations. That book is as old as I am now and does show signs of wear, let’s say it was loved, but luckily it has no signs of mice.

The mouse who nibbled on our chocolate was in any case a simple mouse, plural mice. Did we have a cat? Well, yes. But it was a cat who had attained the venerable age of 17, and probably preferred the tidbits her master gave her every day. On the whole, I didn’t mind mice until I discovered that they had gotten into a drawer where I kept my silk scarves and had chewed holes in some of them, seeking lining for the nests they were preparing for their babies.

One mouse but two (or more) mice. An irregular plural. Companion to louse, lice. Yet I find that mouses, like houses, is also permitted if we are referring to that mouse we use daily as we work with the computer and whose diet consists not of chocolate but who still needs to be nourished by being fed electricity. Mouse. Mice. Mouses.

And the difference between a mouse and a rat? Can’t help but think of Umberto Eco and his “mouse or rat.” Certainly our mouse would not have aroused Hamlet’s ire as he declared “How now? A rat?” and thrust his sword through the curtain killing Ophelia’s father.  With Eco we also find that finding just the right word in Italian for “rat” as compared to “mouse” is rather problematical. For phrases so common in the English language, such as “I smell a rat” there is no simple equivalent and you have to change the simile. The dictionary will then come up with “sento odore di bruciato” (literally, I smell something burning). Or try describing someone as a rat. Sorry , but referring to someone as a mouse has quite a different meaning.

Who hasn’t said “how cute” upon encountering one of these tiny rodents until they get into something like your favorite scarves. Indeed, some have been kept as pets, a word that has no simple equivalent in Italian, having to make do with “animale domestico” or “da compagnia” which is not quite the same. You wouldn’t tell your girlfriend she was a “domestic animal” although you might call her your pet.

On the other hand, artists don’t shy away from mice in their paintings, using them as symbols for any number of things. In particular they may appear in still lifes together will half-eaten apples and nuts, the blemished fruit referring to the transcience of life. Or as a sign of domesticity in an Annunciation or showing Joseph making a mouse trap. These are always mice of course, and often the artist will include a snail, or even a cat, but never or rarely a rat.

So rats out you go. But mice … well it all depends.