Church Mouse
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Reprinted from Animal Whisperer: Wild Conversations by Suzan Vaughn
I’ve negotiated with a lot of rodents to nest in a different place, asking that they abandon their living quarters for new digs in the neighborhood. In this case, I asked that they consider a new home at a local church.
Heat touched the pavement, turned into steam, and rose lazily off the asphalt in late summer when Jo pushed the power button on her Toyota hybrid, and not a thing happened. She grumbled under her breath. For a traveling nurse, the breakdown was particularly inconvenient. She called her employer, rearranged her schedule, and had the car towed to her mechanic.
Raising the hood, the man put his finger to his chin, lifted some wiring, and peered under it. Then he delivered surprising news. He’d found an unconventional electrical problem under the hood.
“Several critical wires and cables are chewed through, and the insulation on other wires is denigrated to the point of being non-functional,” he told her. “It’s the result of a mouse living in your car. I removed the nest and fixed the wiring.”
Then he presented her with a bill for just over $300.00.
The car ran fine and without any problems until about five months later. Jo was looking under her car’s hood when she noticed the insulation on one of the electrical cables appeared to be shredded. Half an inch beneath the wiring was a cozy little mouse nest!
Jo had thought her mouse problems were over but discovered she was still hosting a rodent that lived in her car. Her suspicions were confirmed when the mouse skittered across the dashboard as Jo was driving one day. Jo then planned to strongly invite the mouse to live elsewhere as soon as possible.
Jo thought of a great place for a new mouse home and soon decided the field next to her church would be an ideal place. This was the church I also attended. As I arrived at services that day, I noticed a car with its hood up and wondered if someone was having mechanical troubles. I considered whether I could be of help.
After services, Jo was guided to me by Lisa, another church member who knew about my work as an animal communicator. The two women asked if I could help with re-homing the mouse.
“Jo has a mouse living in her car,” Lisa told me. “Can you help her get him out?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, as Jo and I walked toward the car with its hood up.
“You can see right here where the insulation has been chewed off of this cable,” she said, pointing to a large cable as we stood looking under her hood.
The heavy mesh and the black plastic material surrounding the cable were chewed through. There was a tiny remnant of the mouse nest there, with pieces of black plastic and white cotton still blowing in the breeze.
“It has been living here for quite some time. I thought it was gone, but then I saw it again on the dash of my car as I was driving. After that I found another nest under the hood,” she said. She’d pulled the nest out, and it lay on the ground near the car. Twigs, tape, cotton, and plastic all made up the tiny nest she’d dug out of her engine.
The typical lifespan of this small mammal is about two years, so I asked the mouse if she was the same mouse as the one who had lived in the car before. She said no, but that she had been born under the hood of the car and had lived in the other nest before it was destroyed. She showed me a telepathic picture of hiding out during the mechanic’s work five months earlier.
With her characteristic pointed snout, small, rounded ears, and a long naked or mostly hairless tail, she was a house mouse (Mus musculus), a small mammal of the order Rodentia. Although a wild animal, the house mouse mainly lives in association with humans.
Jo’s snow-white house mouse was actually a car mouse, but she did conform to her genus mus with a body length of about three inches. The weight of this small mammal is typically about an ounce and a half. Its voice is usually a high-pitched squeak. House mice thrive under a variety of conditions, including inside a whirring car engine! Most of the time, they are found in and around homes and commercial structures, as well as in open fields and agricultural lands. Jo had picked the perfect location to offer the mouse a new home.
She had no wish to hurt the tiny creature. She rather liked mice but was somewhat distressed that it was living under the hood of her car. Besides the fact that car repairs were expensive, she worried about the safety of the small rodent after discovering pieces of the mouse’s nest home under the hood once again. After noticing the ragged insulation on one of the main hoses, she had spotted the small pouch-like structure made of the same materials: cotton pieces, car hose insulation, twigs, and fabric.
Before going into church Jo removed the nest, raised her hood, and invited the mouse to make a new home in a lovely field adjacent to the church. The field was full of underground creatures, including ground squirrels and gophers. She hoped the mouse would accept the invitation, and she asked me to communicate her intentions to the rodent.
I approached the car and sat in the passenger seat. Then I asked Jo to give me a moment to see if Ms. Mouse had a message for her, since oftentimes animals or insects persist in a place until the person most closely associated with it receives a particular message.
I took a deep breath, centered, and opened myself to the mouse. She was quite frazzled at the loss of her nest. She felt out of sorts, disconnected and rootless, showing me a picture of roots that were frayed and chewed up. But she calmed down quickly as I tuned into her.
“I’m very sorry about the destruction of your nest,” I said in telepathic pictures and asked her if she was there to deliver a particular message to Jo. She said yes, she was.
“Is it about nesting?” I asked.
Yes, she said. And she referred me to a picture of frayed roots.
“Is that about Jo?” I asked.
Yes, she said. Jo is at loose ends, so to speak. She has lost her nest. She has made a mobile nest and needs to put down roots wherever she goes. She needs to know that she is her own home. Wherever she is, that is where her home is, the mouse relayed in images.
“Aren’t you concerned for your safety living under the hood of a car?” I asked her.
No, she said, there is not a lot of smoke or heat in this car, and there are safe places under the hood. There is food in the car and in the car’s parts, and this car makes a comforting whirr sound like the sound machine some humans use to sleep, she relayed. That electric hybrid vehicle whirr soothed the mouse.
“Thank you,” I said. And I went on to explain the dangers of living under the hood of a car, the problem humans have with mice eating the entrails under the hood, and the offer we would like to make to her instead.
“You could be a church mouse,” I said. “It’s a high honor. There are lots of materials here in the field and the bushes. You would be welcomed to live here outside, and the people in this place honor all life, so you would also know respect from humans. The offer doesn’t extend to the indoor areas, but there are nice areas outside where you could live happily.”
She showed me that she was about to give birth, one reason why she was so nervous about the loss of her nest. I let her know again that there were many materials here in this safe place if she chose to accept the offer. She agreed by showing me a picture of her settling in underneath the church.
After double-checking the messages, I ended the session with gratitude. She sent me a feeling of being much calmer, more centered, and grateful to be able to deliver her message. She was happy about the offer of a new, secure place to live.
I also relayed her message to Jo, asking Jo if it would be accurate to say she was feeling rootless these days. She confirmed that it would be correct and that she was practically living in her car.
I suggested to Jo that, as she drove throughout her day, she consider visualizing roots growing from the bottoms of her feet and her sacrum, deep into the earth. Visualizing the earth as her home was one way to stay grounded, even if her car kept moving! She agreed to do that and thanked me for my assistance.
At an evening service a few days later, I tossed a few crumbs into the bushes at the church, and I showed the mouse where the compost pile for the community was located.
Jo never saw the mouse in her car again. The mouse was happy living under the church and found companionship, nesting materials, and security there. I left Divine Guidance in control of the situation and wished the tiny creature a blessed life. #