Chapter 226 - 102: Mouse Matters (Part 2)
Initially, Xiao Huihui had little interest in mice, but recently, influenced by Tizi, its desire to hunt grew stronger and stronger.
It was fat and long, able to lie directly on the slate and observe the mice below through the gaps.
Imagining from a mouse's perspective, think about being trapped in a prison with no escape, where a long gap in the sealed sky often reveals a terrifying "Mouse-Eating Evil Beast" looking down like food, and the beast's chilling "meow meow" sounds echo around.
The pressure on this group of mice is imaginable.
Although people often say "timid as a mouse," Chen Zhou believed that mice were not timid at all.
When he lived in the countryside as a child, his grandmother's family had a warehouse specifically for storing grain, and after the autumn corn harvest, corn kernels were piled up in the warehouse.
The mice would eat these corn to survive the winter, growing fat and large. The most memorable was a big white mouse.
This creature was huge, comparable to the big black cat at his grandmother's house.
In summer, when Chen Zhou went to the warehouse to move watermelons, that mouse would stand on the windowsill, looking at him with pitch-black eyes, without a hint of fear.
His grandmother, having lived through hard times in the old society, hadn't received an education and was somewhat superstitious, claiming the mouse was a spirit and not to be offended, forbidding Chen Zhou from harming it.
His grandfather, however, was a staunch atheist and bought several mouse traps to try and catch the mouse.
But the mouse had become wise.
Perhaps having seen too many traps, this white mouse was clever and never fell for them. Instead, two kittens got stuck in the traps and took a lot of effort to remove.
With cats at home, using the convenient mouse poison was risky as it could be accidentally ingested by the cats.
His grandfather then bought a mouse cage and traps, but none were effective, especially the traps.
No one knew how clever the mouse had become, it would use clods or cement blocks to trigger the traps and then eat the bait, escaping into the night.
Of the cats at home, only the largest dared to fight the mouse, but it often lost. It even had half an ear bitten off by the mouse.
After several methods and several twists and turns, and half a semester of efforts, the big white mouse remained unscathed, living more and more comfortably.
But the road taken too often will eventually lead to encounters with ghosts.
After the summer holiday in the fourth grade, on the weekend of the first week back at school, Chen Zhou found the skin of that white mouse hanging on the warehouse wall when he went home for the weekend break.
Upon asking his grandfather, he learned that the event was strange and eerie.
His grandmother had been bitten by a dog when she was young, so she was very afraid of dogs and the family never kept any.
The village had a good atmosphere with no thieves, so locking doors was unnecessary, and nothing ever went missing. People who kept dogs mainly used them to greet visitors.
An uncle's family, living on the street behind Chen Zhou's grandmother's house, kept a big wolf dog with shifty eyes.
This creature was very clever.
It would share its dog food with the hens and then sneak them into the doghouse to lay eggs for it to eat.
It would even untie its neck collar and chain to sneak out at night to play, then return during the day and pretend like nothing happened while hiding in the doghouse.
At that time, Chen Zhou's grandmother had five or six cats, all of which ate under the tree in the yard.
Every day, she would mix rice with vegetable soup and leave it under the tree. When the cats returned, they would go there to eat. If the family had improved meals, the cats could also eat some pieces of fat meat or gnaw on leftover bones.
Separated by only a wall, the big wolf dog would often climb over to steal the cat food from Chen Zhou's grandmother's house.
As fate would have it, the big white mouse, seeing that humans couldn't do anything to it, grew bolder and started eyeing the cat food too.
It was destined for this calamity.
According to Chen Zhou's grandfather, it was around the fourteenth or fifteenth day of the lunar calendar when the moon was full. The mouse went under the tree at midnight to steal cat food and unfortunately encountered the big wolf dog.
The wolf dog was full of mischief, fearless of its owner's sticks and whips, often stealing chickens and chasing geese, bullying small dogs, and committing robberies along with other dogs. Seeing a mouse stealing its food, it immediately pounced to bite.
Though the mouse was large and capable of fighting a cat, this wolf dog was over 80 pounds, often digging holes and climbing walls, strong and agile.
The huge difference in size made it impossible for the mouse to use its intelligence to its advantage,
and since there were no mouse holes under the tree, with open terrain, bright moonlight, and clear visibility, it had nowhere to escape to.
In an instant, the once-dominant white mouse ended its wicked life, caught in the wolf dog's mouth and killed.
The wolf dog was a picky eater, disdainful of mouse meat. After eliminating the thief, it casually dropped the white mouse aside and started eating the cat food.
Chen Zhou's grandfather witnessed it all from the window inside and, seeing the wolf dog make a merit by killing the white mouse, chose not to chase it away, allowing it to peacefully finish a whole bowl of cat food.
The next morning, he skinned the white mouse and hung it on the warehouse wall.
This event became a legend in the village, with almost everyone knowing the bizarre story of the wolf dog and the white demon mouse. However, things did not end well for the wolf dog.
Two years later, when Chen Zhou's great-uncle's family bought a batch of sheep, during winter lambing, the lambs frequently went missing from the pen.
Due to the wolf dog's infamous record, it became the prime suspect for the family.