Herbert was a brave, yet lonely member of our community, whose bold endeavors and unimaginable adventures remained widely unheard of, mainly due to the fact that he was a mouse - yet as of sunday, twenty second of april, two thousand and twelve, fifteen minutes before five in the evening, the first warm and sunny spring day of this year, his trails wind no more.
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| Herbert no more than an hour before he was taken from us, here depicted attempting to enjoy his final meal. |
some less than two hours before the reaching that sad point of fate on the timeline i had the pleasure of meeting Herbert personally, when upon entering my wood shack to fetch the coal grill, as the weather was utmost agreeable for basking by a barbeque, a loud shout from the throat of a friend of mine rescued Herbert from being stomped on by me.
Hebert's first reaction was to haste his way towards the wood rack in order to locate a crevice in the log pile suitable to camouflage his tiny self, a decision not too difficult to understand considering the fact that i am as ugly as a roadkill beaver and about five thousand times his size, but the manner in which he made his escape made evident something else - Herbert was not at the finest of health.
gathering that - and this is no more than an uneducated guess - Herbert had fallen victim to the foul play of replacing ones food with poison, we decided to grant him his sovereignty over his personal space and not traumatize him further with my presence, but not too long after that we discovered that Herbert had followed me outside and was observing our doings from a semi-safe distance.
this act of curiosity, an offer of friendship and trust, was bartered for a cubic centimeter of cheese cut in four slices and a beer bottle cap full of water, either of which he managed to consume no more than two percent, yet we like to think that this gesture brought at least some peace of mind to him in his wait of the unknown.
after using this sublime opportunity for some curious nature photography we gave Herbert some privacy once more, although he didn't leave our side, and after a while we noticed - instead of his brown back it was his pink paws that were facing the sky.
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| Herbert after his inevitable cessation of life. in the most curious case of irony, just as i started taking this photo, the bells of the nearby church started tolling. was Herbert a christian mouse? we might never know... |
in mournful silence i ever so gently picked Hebert's earthly remains up with a pair of sticks and tossed his still soft and probably still warm carcass towards the back of the garden where the grass is a bit higher, and that was one mouse life done with. let your soul be powerful in Rodenhalla and may your bones only be picked by the most majestic seagulls and expensive house cats.
Anton Lember
Tartu, 2012
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