Rabbie Burns Night and our mouse

Eric plays the bass drum

The Pipe Band

Steve and Eric eating haggis!

Rabbie's 250 birthday celebration

Eric's wife, Donna, painted this mural!

To a Mouse

(Whilst ploughing on a November day, Burns ruined the nest of a field mouse. He ponders why the creature runs away in such terror)

Oh, tiny timorous forlorn beast,
Oh why the panic in your breast ?
You need not dart away in haste
To some corn-rick
I'd never run and chase thee,
With murdering stick.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
And justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startleAt me,
thy poor earth-born companion,
And fellow mortal.

I do not doubt you have to thieve;
What then? Poor beastie you must live;
One ear of corn that's scarcely missed
Is small enough:
I'll share with you all this year's grist,
Without rebuff.

Thy wee bit housie too in ruin,
Its fragile walls the winds have strewn,
And you've nothing new to build a new one,
Of grasses green;
And bleak December winds ensuing,
Both cold and keen.

You saw the fields laid bare and waste,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cosy there beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash; the cruel ploughman crushed
Thy little cell.

Your wee bit heap of leaves and stubble,
Had cost thee many a weary nibble.
Now you're turned out for all thy trouble
Of house and home
To bear the winter's sleety drizzle,
And hoar frost cold.

But, mousie, thou art not alane,
In proving foresight may be in vain,
The best laid schemes of mice and men,
Go oft astray,
And leave us nought but grief and pain,
To rend our day.

Still thou art blessed, compared with me!
The present only touches thee,
But, oh, I backward cast my eye
On prospects drear,
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear.

Saturday night Steve and I were invited by his friend Eric Mayne and his family to Robert Burns Night at the Scottish Club in Windsor Canada, where the 250th birthday of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns was celebrated with the piping in of the haggis and other fantastic pipe band music. Steve and I tried haggis (you don't want the recipe) for the first time and it was actually pretty good! I don't think it will become a diet staple but the night was highly entertaining and we learned a lot about Robert Burns and his literary contributions while taking in the wonderful sounds of the bagpipes and drums. I loved the poem, to a Mouse, since we are now sharing our log cabin with one of those little creatures. We knew we had a mouse because of the droppings around the stove, but we were in denial until one day we saw the FATTEST mouse waddling across the kitchen floor, audaciously taunting Roxy, who wasn't sure what she was suppose to do so she just sniffed it as I screamed for Steve to do something. There was no mousy scurrying, so I think our mouse knows how ineffectual we are with rodents. We bought a safe trap at the drug store, not really sure of what we were going to do with a mouse if we caught it, since it was too cold to release it in the outdoors, and nowhere else we could really dump it without passing the rodent infestation on to someone else. Steve set the trap and really, it was just a few minutes later and we heard it shut and the mouse was captured! We thought about it and decided we were going to have to get a cage until we decided what to do. So Steve put the mouse in a closed cardboard box and we left it to buy our cage. TWENTY DOLLARS later we brought home the little cage with an exercise wheel and some rodent kibble from the pet store and proceded to do the transfer of the mouse from the cardboard box to the cage. It took a little while to realize there was no mouse in the cardboard box anymore. Like Houdini, it had escaped a closed container! We reset the trap and we don't need to tell you that mice haven't been around for millions of years because they are stupid. The mouse hasn't gone anywhere near the trap and is probably now nursing a mouse litter of half a dozen little babies which explained her plumpness. I need ye, Rabbie Burns to help with an ode to many mice!