THE LITTLE MOUSE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 April 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

THE LITTLE MOUSE

SAD MOMENT IN A HOTEL. STORY OF STUDENT OF SCIENCE. There is a certain clever young biologist who might, if she chose, spend her days gathering the rosebuds which wealth, good looks and .an assured social position offer her, but who prefers to devote all her exceptionally brilliant capacities to the study of parasites, even to those uninviting creatures which feed on other living organisms and are so often the carriers of deadly diseases. Carrying on the work of a famous father, she has done important research work of her own in this field; and even when She is supposedly travelling for pleasure she never fails to take her microscope with her, or to collect such material as the region. she is visiting affords. Some of the parasites she is specially interested in are fleas, the varieties of which are legion; but it is not always easy for a gently-nurtured young lady to establish personal contact with them. Her only hope lies in the unwilling assistance of the town mouse. „ “Have you arty mice in this place?” she sternly asked the manager of a firstclass Naples hotel when she arrived there. “Mice! Heaven forbid!” ejaculated the manager, raising hands of protest and eyes of horror; “how can you imagine such things of us?” “But I want one—so badly! Can’t you manage to have one, just one, caught for me? I’ll pay you anything you like for it.” (And so she might, for her name is a symbol for wealth throughout the world.) Well, of course, put like that, it was quite another matter. The . manager would see—it. was just, possible that somewhere in the. lower regions one solitary mouse might be found. Sure enough, a few days later a giggling chambermaid appeared carrying a trap, through the bars of which there gleamed tiny eyes of lustrous black. Then followed a dark hour, for the little creature had to be killed before it could be searched for' the parasites in its fur; and our young scientist has not yet grown so callous in the pursuit of knowledge that she can kill even a fly with equanimity. Yet somehow the-deed was done, as quickly and painlessly as possible, and •it was then that the full scope of the tragedy was revealed, for the most diligent search could not discover so much as a single flea. “It was the cleanest little thing!” wailed the disappointed student. “Oh, how I wish I hadn’t killed it!”

However, although it failed to add its quota of fleas to the cause of science, that Naples mouse did not, after all, die in vain. For ever since that fateful night its successors in misfortune are merely chloroformed instead of being killed outright, and having been searched are allowed to revive and scamper off again, none the worse for their adventure,