Also Not About Flooding

When I was a kid, I had some pet mice. (We also had a tortoise, a rabbit, one cat, four dogs, a couple of parakeets, a boa constrictor named Daisy, a flock of chickens, and a wild iguana living in the bushes. That’s right, I grew up in a frickin’ menagerie. Back to the mice.)

At first, there were only two mice. Snowflake and Licorice.

Then we got a few more, like Raccoon, VW, Cinnamon, Pipsqueak, and about twenty more.

But this is about Snowflake and Raccoon.



Snowflake had babies. She didn’t much care for them, and didn’t really want to sit and nurse them. Raccoon, who had no babies, seemed as if she was constantly trying to convince Snowflake to feed her children. When Snowflake was absent, Raccoon would be in the nest cleaning the babies and taking care of them. Except feeding them. She tried, but she had no milk.

One day, Snowflake ate her babies. We were disgusted, and fed her to Daisy.


Raccoon later had a litter of her own and was an excellent mother. She cleaned them, she fed them, she cuddled them, she did not eat them, and they all grew to adulthood. She had more children, too. Her progeny were given to each classroom in my elementary school so each classroom could have a class pet (until a few broke out of their cages, escaped into the heating ducts which connected all classrooms, infested the school with mice, and occasionally would get cooked in the heaters so there was a very nasty smell when the heat came on in winter and then the principal outlawed mice as classroom pets—but that’s another post).

What was the difference between the two mice? Temperament? Insanity? A craving for tender baby flesh?

It’s a question that has troubled me, especially since the birth of my own son. Not that I ever had the desire to eat him, exactly, but I did have a nastily severe case of postpartum depression after he was born. And I thought about those two dumb mice, and I couldn't help wondering if I were a Snowflake: either genetically programmed to be a mess of a mother, or something in me saw my offspring and craved him dripping in barbecue sauce...

However, I do feed him, cuddle him, and clean him, and so far I haven't marinated him and popped him in the oven, so I figure I must be doing okay. But the thought of having more children...it seems like a really bad idea. Really. Experience number 1 was so intense and miserable and terrifying that I think it would be stupidity (and hazardous to the health of our family) to go through it again.

And yet, it’s hard to let go of that possibility of more kids, even though common sense, personal revelation, and reality have proved the necessity of not having any more... Is my biological clock really so strong and stupid as that? Isn't there supposed to be an emergency self-preservation button on the dumb thing somewhere? To turn it off?

It's also very hard to explain the situation to people around me (who will, of course, ask when the next child will be coming along). Especially you mormon freaks—"oh, don't worry, you’ll have another! Sure you will! You know, multiply and replenish the earth! Mate on! More Mormons, more mormons!"

No. Probably not. It is unwise.

I keep thinking something will change—the Boy will go off to school, I'll suddenly find myself in a permanent emotional state so stable you could build a house on it, and magically, I’ll be able to manange another child. Not gonna happen.

So what is a woman to do? Denial? Delusion? A combination of both culminating in herding your husband to the local animal shelter to adopt a new child pet?

Apparently, the latter. Proudly announcing the new member of our family:

Clicky-click if you want to see it in its full glory.

And before you leave a comment, please remember to take this posting with this. Or, perhaps, with this. Oh, heck, you may as well take this, too.