Five groundhogs successfully relocated from our garden a few weeks ago, I've been methodically reclaiming it from the weeds that had flourished in it during our time of despair. Another satisfying morning of weeding today, handful after handful of big clumps of weeds, heavy lift of earth as the whole root ball comes up in my grasp. Shaking the soil back down, tossing the plants into a mound to carry in armfuls to the compost pile. And then: "squeak-squeak!" A tiny, gray baby mouse comes blindly clambering out of my current handful. I exclaim and apologize to it, my curious kids and mother come to see. Then another tiny, fetus-like creature appears from the tangle of plants, then another, and another, making their awkward, infantile ways away from their nest, away from one another, out towards oblivion.
I pick them up gently and nestle them in my cupped hand, one after another after another, piling their squirming, velvety bodies upon one another as more appear from under the grass, from behind a clump of soil. The kids point them out as they appear, "There's another one! Can I hold one? Can I pat them?" They touch and wonder at the tiny things in my palm, and my mother shows them how the eyes are still sealed shut.
We find the perfect grass nest that I'd disturbed, see the tiny cave within that the babies had been curled in, hardly bigger than a golf ball for all nine of them. I hold their dislodged nest and pour them, still squirming, back into it, cover it loosely with an abandoned mouse nest I'd discovered yesterday under a clay pot. I hold the soft ball of grasses and babies in my hand as we work to clear a small area to rebuild their hiding place. Half a minute later, we lift the top to see if the tiny things were real or just a sweet dream, and discover all of them perfectly still, perfectly sleeping, nestled in the grasses and in one another.
"Dere's da mudder!" My girl lifts us out of our reverie, pointing to a gray mouse boldly skirting the grasses near my knee, searching for her babies. We place the covered nest on the ground, roof it with an inverted plant pot, and dig a channel under an edge so the mother can slip in easily. Then we scurry away to the other side of the garden for the rest of the day.
In amidst all of the clearing, weeding, planting, watering, staking, pruning. In amidst all the healthful productivity in the garden, the most precious spot is the remaining wild patch of grasses, and the clay pot with the nine tiny mice inside.
For the rest of the day, two little mice kept us company in the living room, snuggled together in their own little nest.
"SQUEAK SQUEAK!"
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