Osler's Razor

Very early on Saturday morning, at about 3 a.m., I heard a noise in my kitchen. It was a very specific noise, too: that of a person eating a bag of chips.

Rustle rustle rustle
{silence}
Rustle rustle rustle
{silence}
Rustle rustle rustle

The obvious image leapt to my mind: a man in my kitchen, casually eating chips before making his way out of the house (presumably with some stuff).

I listened some more, now wide awake. I could be in the kitchen in just a few seconds if I ran, and that is what I did-- stopping to flip on the lights. As I approached the room, I thought that I heard some skittering. Looking into the kitchen, there was no one; just an open bag of Tostidos leaning against the breadbox.  Whoever had been eating the chips was still in the house.

Quietly, I crept from room to room, flipping on lights and checking in corners. Nothing. Flummoxed, I flopped down on the couch and thought.

Only then did it occur to me to look inside the bag of chips. And there he was: a tiny brown mouse looking up at me as his paws furiously tried to run up the side of the bag.

I certainly did not want a mouse in my house, and he was already in a bag, so I simply took the bag and walked outside on the back patio. The bricks were cold under my bare feet; Minnesota is like that.  The ground was a little wet, and there was utter silence.

In my hand was a Tostitos bag with a live mouse inside. I didn't have a plan, though I ran through a few options. If I let the mouse go, I knew he would find his way back into the house. If I crushed him in the bag, it would be relatively easy; I wouldn't even see the blood or the broken body. Finally, I could just put him in the trash can in the sealed bag and assume he would die, super-villian style.

As I worked through these options, the mouse leapt from the bag to freedom-- a mad, furious leap from three feet up to the cold bricks-- and scrambled away beyond the barbecue grill and the chiminea.  Now I just had an empty bag. I stayed out there for a bit, thinking about the mouse. In his own way, he was a brave little guy. He had lived most of his life outside, eating nuts and seeds and hiding from cats and hawks.  It got cold, and he found a way in and then found a way to the top of the counter. He peered into a bag of chips and jumped in, with no plan on how to get out. And when he had a brief, stark chance for freedom, he leapt into the darkness and landed on his own four paws.

It could have been a man in the house, an insouciant thief.  I could have crushed the mouse, killed it instantly, or sealed the bag to be his prison until he died. In the end, I did not choose to let him go. He chose to go. But of the options, that was the best.