The First Christmas Mouse

The title says it all!

You can read the story of click the link for a Flash version read for you with audio and pictures!

 

Just Click this link http://www.eclipselogic.com/the_first_christmas_mouse.html

Sean Allen

 

 

The First Christmas Mouse

 

The true story as told to me by an old Field Mouse in Vermont

"-ׂ

 

Search the internet or libraries and book stores for Christmas Mouse and you'll find thousands of listings.  There are countless stories about Fievel and Mickey Mouse at Christmas and mice that live in people's houses at the holiday season like Stuart Little.  But there's one thing wrong with all of those Christmas Mouse stories… Those mice all talk, act like people, and they all have names.

 

Sorry kids, but in the real world, mice don't talk or act like people and this is a real world story.  Mice don't have names either, unless they are pets or cartoon characters.  Anyway, no self respecting mouse would ever go by any of those silly names that people gave them.  Mice are simply too smart for that

 

Narrow your computer search by putting "Christmas Mouse" in quotes and what happens… you'll still find a hundred thousand.  Search for "The Christmas Mouse" and there are at least 20,000 listings.  Baby's first stuffed animal and first Christmas ornament show up, along with various mouse stories and picture books written over the years.

 

Ah, but do an exact search for "The First Christmas Mouse" and suddenly everything changes… You'll find nothing.  That's right; the story of The First Christmas Mouse is nowhere on the internet or in any library or bookstore either for that matter.  Try it again on different internet sites and it's the same thing, it's just not there, until now that is.  Why is that you are asking?

 

The answer is that no one ever heard the story of the First Christmas Mouse until I learned it myself as a young boy from an old field mouse I met in a field one summer in Vermont.  This true story had been passed on from mouse to mouse for hundreds and hundreds of years until he first heard it in 1952.

 

So sit back and listen to, or read it for yourself if you prefer, the story of The First Christmas Mouse. I have decided, with the old mouse's permission, to pass it on to you at this time, exactly as the aging Apodemus communicated it to me when I was just a boy of ten…

 

The First Christmas Mouse

 

Many, many years ago, on the other side of the world, there was a little brown mother field mouse.  She didn't have a name and she couldn't talk as I already explained, but she could count.  She had recently given birth to her first litter of five babies, very proudly in fact, and knew there were five because she had five toes on her hind foot.  She would look at each toe one by one and wiggle it and then look at one of her babies and knew that they were all there safely in the little nest of hay where she kept them warm.  She also knew how to love her babies and she did a splendid job of nursing, grooming and generally caring for them.

 

There were lots of other animals living in the stable where the mice made their home and every day, a large man animal would come and bring food to the bigger furry animals with four legs.  The mouse couldn't understand why one animal would give food to another, but that didn't prevent her from taking some for her young who were beginning to eat different foods.  The man animal didn't have fur like other animals, so he covered himself with cloth when the weather was cold.  When it was warm, she could see that the man animals really didn't have any fur on their bodies, except on their heads, which made them look quite silly.  Man animals looked rather like pink newborn mice before their fur came in.

 

The large man animal, or the smaller one who had long hair on her head and also came sometimes, would bring food each day and pour it into the feeding trough.  Then the furry animals would eat their fill and usually spill some of the food on the ground that the mouse could pick up with her mouth and take back to her five babies who were now big enough to begin eating some solid food, even though they were still nursing.

 

One night, a very strange thing happened.  There appeared another man animal that the mouse had never seen before and he tied up his brown furry animal with a rope.  Sitting on top of the furry animal was another person with long hair like the small girl she saw sometimes, only fully grown and close in size to the man animal with her.  The man gently helped her get off the brown furry animal.  The mouse decided that she was a person of the opposite gender, just like the way she herself was a bit different from the father of her babies.

 

Then, suddenly…. a bright silver light appeared in the heavens and it came shining down and poured through the slats in the roof of the stable.  Light often came into the stable at night when the moon was full, but the moon wasn't full on that night so long ago.  The tiniest sliver of that starlight light fell right on the nest where the five babies were and one of the baby mice, the first born, saw it and got up to go and investigate.

 

Out in the stable, the man animal lit a fire to an oil lamp and it gave off a different light, sort of golden, so that the mother mouse could more clearly see the two people.  The light from the lamp also lit up some food lying on the ground.  She scurried out to get some and take back to her babies as the two people stood making the sounds that people often made to communicate with each other.

 

Getting back to the nest, she dropped the food on the ground and quickly looked at her toes to count her babies, as she always did.  But for the first time ever, one of the babies was missing. She counted them again more carefully and her fears were confirmed… a baby was gone.  She quickly ran to see if she could find the little one who must have gone off to explore now that he was able to walk.  She searched and searched all around the stable but did not see him anywhere.  As she raced about frantically, she paused a moment to notice that the woman animal was kneeling down in the hay in a corner animal pen.  She was making her own nest right there in the stable.

 

Just as the woman was laying some cloths on top of the hay she had piled up, the man said some strange words and hurried away for a while and then came back making more frantic sounds.  The mouse could tell that the words were an indication that the man animal was in some sort of distress and it reminded her that her baby was missing so she went off to keep looking for it.  After checking her own nest again and finding only four, she came back and saw the woman animal lying quietly on the nest that she had made.  When the woman spoke to the excited man her words were calming and peaceful.

 

After a while, the mouse knew that she had to go back and keep her other babies warm, which she did, knowing that she would need to find the missing baby soon because he was still young and defenseless.  While she was nursing and warming her other babies, she heard a sound she had never heard before.

Without even knowing what it was, the mother mouse knew that the woman had given birth to a baby of her own.  This made the mouse happy and sad at the same time because her own baby was still missing.

 

When she finished nursing her babies, she set off to find her missing baby once again.  She noticed that the man and the woman were both kneeling, one on each side of the feeding trough, which people called a manger, where the furry animals ate each day.  She quickly realized that the woman must have placed her newborn baby in the manger to sleep.  The woman had placed straw and cloths inside to make a soft bed for the baby.

 

Then the mother mouse noticed something that frightened her and made her happy all at the same time.  There climbing up the crossed wooden legs of the manger was her own little baby.  He reached the top and stood on the wood looking in at the newborn baby boy.  The man animal noticed the mouse and raised his hand to swat it away and the mother mouse feared the worst.  But the baby's mother, realizing that the mouse too was just a baby, spoke calmly as she raised her own hand to prevent him from hurting the baby mouse.  The little mouse stood there bravely on his hind legs balanced by his tail as the silver light from above sparkled on his little dark brown eyes and he held his front paws together and watched the baby boy.  Outside the wind began to make a beautiful singing sound as if it too was praising the newborn baby.

 

After a while more man animals with long poles and furry animals with curly hair came to visit and they all knelt down in front of the manger, one by one, and looked in at the baby just like the parents and the little mouse had already done.

Even some of the large furry animals from the stable came over to see what was happening.  Soon, the young girl with the long hair came to see what was going on too and she went to tell others, and they came as well.

 

Eventually great learned men riding very large furry animals with long legs and big feet came and brought gifts for the new born baby.  The gifts were precious gold and spices.  They carefully got off their animals, who had themselves knelt down.  The mouse heard the men speak to the mother and father of the baby words that sounded something like… "We saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him."

 

It was then told to me by the old mouse that for all time since that night and forever more in the future, people will see that same shining light.  They might even simply see it glowing in the face of another man animal, or even a child.

 

They will get up from where they are, no matter what they are doing.  Often they will not even know why they are doing it.  Then they will go and follow the Child who was born that night in a stable in Bethlehem and laid in a manger where the little mouse was the first ever to give Him praise.

 

So there you have it children, the true story of The First Christmas Mouse.  Word for word exactly as the old field mouse in Vermont passed it on to me.

 

The first man or animal ever to see the newborn Child of God was simply the first one who got up and went looking for Him after seeing the light.  Since that night, countless millions of men and woman, boys and girls, and yes, even an occasional field mouse, have gone looking for Him and they have all found Him and knelt before Him as well.

 

The brown mother mouse lost count a long time ago right there in the stable using all four feet to count all of the people and animals who came to see the baby born on that first Christmas night.  She had many more babies as time went on too and they went on to tell the story.  But somehow she knew that her first born wandering baby boy was somehow privileged to be the first ever to see the silver light and first to seek out the child born that very first Christmas.

Her own son was in fact, The First Christmas Mouse.

 

The End

 

© 2008 D.  McDaniel Hayden