TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 175

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 10, 2000000007


Dear Phoebe,

	On my monitor sits a stuffed, shiny 
purple dragon with a puffy red mouth, tongue 
flicking out.  She has a big purple ribbon, 
bordered with a silver stripe, tied in a bow 
around her neck.  This was Feyna's Channukah 
present to me.  She kept asking me if I had a 
name for it.  I didn't.  It sat on top of my 
dresser staring out at the world with its red 
tongue, beady eyes and purple bow.  Then one 
morning, Feyna brought it in to me at the 
computer and smacked it down on top of the 
monitor.  She said, firmly, "Okay.  Name the 
dragon!"  When pressed, I dipped down into my 
family history and came up with the name of my 
paternal Grandfather's step mother, Ruchel Bunya 
(BOONyah, oo as in foot).  Now I say hello to 
Ruchel Bunya every time I sit down at my station. 
But it took Feyna getting aggressive for me to 
name her.





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Eeek, a mouse!


	My brother was in third grade when the 
class had a gift exchange.  It was all secret. 
You weren't supposed to know who had given you a 
present.  You just drew the name from a hat, and 
whoever it was, you had to get that person a 
present. This probably had something to do with 
Christmas;  that seems like a natural fit.  My 
brother drew the name of one of the other boys in 
his class and my mother took him out to buy a 
little gift.  There was a maximum price limit on 
it.  But of course there was no minimum, so 
technically speaking, you could wrap up a penny 
and give it to your intended, or, hell, you could 
saw the penny in half and give the lucky someone 
half a penny.  Money like that went farther in 
those days.

	Daniel set off for the big gift exchange 
day with his present under his arm.  When he came 
back that afternoon, he was carrying a cage with 
a mother mouse and six newborn baby mice in it. 
This was truly a white elephant, not a mouse 
family.  The story I heard behind the meaning of 
a white elephant was that it originated in India. 
A white elephant (I suppose that would be an 
albino) is sacred.  You cannot use it as a beast 
of burden.  It must be cared for, though.  You 
can't just abandon your sacred white elephant by 
the side of the road hoping some other kind 
hearted person would adopt the large pet, feed it 
and clean up after it.  It needs to be treated as 
the holy beast it is.  I don't know whether that 
includes massages every day, or a special diet, 
and I don't know whether you can use its dung to 
build houses with.  In some sense, that would be 
making it work, though I've seen elephants in 
process, and they do it effortlessly.

	Now, here's the rule to remember:  If a 
Maharajah gives you something as a gift, you 
cannot give it to someone else.  You cannot get 
rid of it in any way.  You are culture bound to 
keep it.  This is one of the powers of a 
Maharajah.  He gives you the plaster golfer lamp 
with the post coming straight out of the golfer's 
head, painted chartreuse, blue and red, and you 
have to keep it forever.  You probably can't even 
throw it out if it breaks when it accidentally 
falls over because the golfer's back swing is top 
heavy.  It stays in your house in a place of 
honour.  This is a rule.  So, if you got on the 
Maharajah's shit list, what he could do is give 
you a white elephant.   It is an honour.  Then, 
you are stuck with this six ton creature, whom 
you cannot put to labour and must feed and be a 
slave to forever.

	That is what Daniel brought home with him 
that day from school.  He was delighted.  Wow! 
Mice!  Real live mice!  But when my mother saw 
the mouse family, she said, "Oh no!"  She knew 
exactly what was going on in the other kid's 
mother's head when she rubbed her hands together 
and said, "We can give him the mice!"

	She fumed.  Now what.

	Daniel, of course, wanted to keep them, 
and we couldn't flush them all down a toilet.  So 
for the time being, he was allowed to shelter 
them.  There were hand written instructions on 
what to feed them and how frequently to clean out 
the cage.  Ever heard the expression, "A rat's 
nest"?  The same goes for mice.

	Daniel hovered over the cage watching the 
mother mouse and her babies as they suckled and 
lay there, wobbled around.  I took a look.  The 
babies were so tiny, no bigger than the last 
joint of a finger.  Their eyes were like skin 
covered ball bearings, buldging out of their 
heads.  They were hairless.  The mother looked 
exhausted.  She was a milk dispenser.  They are 
not terribly brilliant animals and were not 
displaying anything particularly interesting. 
They were all nervous.  The mother moved in short 
jerks and her nose was always twitching.  She 
didn't like the upheaval, I'm sure.  One moment, 
she was with her human family, the ones she was 
used to, the big things that brought the food and 
water.  The next moment, she was being carted off 
into the unknown, the cage swinging, her whole 
habitat in transit, her newborn babies being 
tossed around as the cage jolted.  Now, she was 
with an entirely new family of different smelling 
huge things, all staring at her, making 
unfamiliar noises and moving in unfamiliar ways. 
The surroundings were different, too.  She was 
used to the cage sitting on the floor in a 
kitchen, the linoleum stretching out, white on 
all sides of the cage.  She watched feet 
shuffling around, and the heat from the stove 
wafted over to her little house.  The cabinets 
were green.  One of the big things hunkered by 
the cage and stuck his finger in through the bars 
every once in a while.  It was home.  Now, she 
was up on a table, high above the floor, the 
walls were beige.  There were no cabinets, but a 
gaping black hole in the wall out of which a 
slight draft swirled.  The humans were sticking 
their faces near the cage.  Strange faces, and 
more of them.  She and her babies were being 
observed constantly  It was a new frightening 
world.

	So she did what any normal mother would 
do.  She started to eat her babies.

	Daniel was horrified, truly shaken, and 
went running to my mother.  I was horrified and 
nearly lost my dinner.  My mother came rushing 
over to the grizzly scene and gave out another, 
"Oh no!" maybe even an, "Oy, gevalt!"  We 
couldn't intercede and stop this from happening. 
How do you get in between a mother mouse and her 
beloved, delicious children without getting badly 
bitten?

	My mother questioned Daniel.  He seemed 
to know who the culprit was.  So, in the stealth 
of night, we carried the caged mouse and her 
dining experience back to where she'd come from, 
and left the white elephant on the front porch. 
No note.  No word.  No doorbell.  No dessert.

	I have never liked pet mice.  There is a reason.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net