The Mouse and the Vicar

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright 2011 Plot Roach.

The Mouse and the Vicar

By Plot Roach

It was a beautiful sunny day as the vicar made his rounds around the church. His disciples and servants worked day and night to keep the place shining as though it was Heaven itself. The pews were polished, the floors shined, and all was well within his universe. He checked the supplies in the rooms used to educate the masses, the books were stacked on their shelves, the parchment box was filled with rolls waiting to be used, the feather quills trimmed to fine points and the inkwells filled to the brim.

But when the vicar checked on the food in the pantry, he was greatly displeased. He had expected to find the same perfection in this room as he had all the others in his church. Instead, he found nibbled holes in the cloth that held the rice, the rinds of expensive imported cheeses, and through the loaf of bread that had been set aside to be part of his supper. Then and there the vicar swore to be the enemy of the little mouse that roamed his church.

“I will not have this in my house!” the vicar yelled. He called on his servants to remedy the situation. Day and night they each took turns watching the pantry for signs of the furry thief. But day after day the creature eluded him, while more and more of the food went missing from the pantry. The vicar soon discovered, as he hid one night to watch the pantry from a secret place, that it was not just the mouse that was stealing from him, but his servants as well. He watched as late into the night the mouse made his appearance. But instead of catching the creature and putting it to death, as he was ordered by the vicar, the man simply tore off a chunk of bread and offered the mouse a bite as he finished the rest of the loaf.

The next day the vicar had the man flogged for daring to steal from the Lord’s pantry and for disobeying a direct order. The servant, in his defense, said that “it was only a little mouse, and surely could not do much damage. And was not the food in the pantry for all of the followers of the Lord?”

“Perhaps a cat can do what a man cannot”, the vicar told himself. He set the beast down in the pantry and locked him in. Again, the vicar watched form his hiding place and was happy when the cat set upon the mouse with much ferocity, flinging the little creature up into the air, only to let it fall to the ground and pounce upon it again. He was about to turn away from the scene, sure that the mouse was doomed, when the cat released the mouse entirely and purred. The mouse, it seemed, had made this a playful game with the cat. Attempting to run from the cat, being caught and flipping through the air, and landing a few feet away only to begin the game again. Now, with the cat’s energy spent, the mouse pulled down a link of sausage and chewed into it, dropping chunks to the floor for its playmate, thereby feeding the cat as well as itself.

The next morning the vicar had the cat taken to a far away village, so that it would not return to play with the mouse. The vicar then used poisons which were left untouched. He tried making traps that were found in the morning to be sprung, their contents robbed. The vicar, beside himself with fury over the little mouse, neglected his other duties in order to catch and eradicate this vermin he deemed and insult to the house of the Lord.

One night, after the vicar had exhausted his options, he vowed to sit in the pantry by himself to catch the thief. Late into the night, as he was about to nod off into sleep, the mouse made its appearance. It sat boldly upon the shelf and winked at the vicar, helping itself to a chunk of cheese as the man seethed in hate at the sight. The vicar grabbed up a hoe he had brought with him to end the mouse’s life and swung at the creature, missing it by mere inches. Again and again the vicar swung at the mouse, missing it every time. Before long the pantry and its contents lay in ruins as the mouse ran from the little room to seek shelter elsewhere in the church. Again the vicar chased it, swinging at anything in his path. The mouse and the vicar left a path of destruction throughout the once beautiful building, but the vicar would not cease his chase of the mouse until he had brought it to death.

The mouse ran until it was well past the front doors of the church, pausing only so that the vicar could catch up to it. The vicar lifted the hoe, about to bring it down on the little creature when he noticed that the light of dawn was swiftly approaching -from the west. Knowing that this was wrong, the vicar looked up to see his beautiful church in ruins, burning down and lighting up the night sky with its flames. He dropped the hoe, the mouse almost forgotten as he fell to his knees and cried: “Why, Lord? Why?”

“Does not the great book from which you read tell you that we are all His creatures?” asked the mouse. “You preach the letter of His law, but not the spirit of it. You are to aid those that need help, no matter how trivial the matter. Someone with a stomach as small as mine would not have bankrupted your church, but added to your number of followers. And perhaps if you had shown more compassion and leniency with your servants, He might have shown more with His.”