Double~take | catching mice

Don’t underestimate…

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nce, a boy and his friend came to show us a mouse they had caught. They had too - one of them had in their hand a squirming mouse held carefully in a tea towel, and I have no idea how they managed to catch it. (Neither boy was older than about six.) The dad of one of the boys commented - “It must have been a really old mouse for those guys to have caught it!” I knew better than to laugh with him, though, because it reminded me of the last time I underestimated a six-year-old…

In about October last year I helped out on a camp for boys aged 6-11. Early one morning I went down to check out the animal enclosure (the camp was on a farm) and ran into a couple of boys doing the same thing. As I was walking off a bit later one of the boys shouted to me “Hey look! I caught a bird!” Seeing as there were plenty of chickens around that he might’ve caught, I was tempted to shout back my congratulations and keep walking. Instead I turned back to see.

This kid had, clenched in his fist, a Willy Wagtail. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a small black bird a bit smaller than a sparrow and about as flighty, but with a long fan shaped tail that it ‘wags’ about. Hence the name. He’d caught one with his bare hands. I was officially impressed, and I told him so. Apparently it had been in one of the chicken enclosures, and he had chased it round till it collapsed and he could pick it up. Creative!

So when my boss made the comment about the boys and their mouse, I knew better than to dismiss the improbable.

Don’t look down on the young. It will save you from having the young forcibly stop you from looking down on them

Double~take appears every Saturday on theRubicon. Find past Double~take posts and a bio of Stephanie Hung here.

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