O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool?

My last post, published at 12:00, dealt with a sync between an  old post of mine and a recent one of Galahad Eridanus’s. In both posts, one of the four faces of the Cherubim had been replaced with a turtle. In GE’s post, it was the lion that had been replaced. In my own, it was the man — so, exactly parallel situations, except for the lion/man difference. Furthermore, my post had to do with Alice in Wonderland, and specifically the Gryphon character. GE’s post was published under the name Gryphon.

At around 1:00, an hour after publishing that post, I went to a large outdoor sink near my house to wash something. Inside the sink, sitting perfectly still, was a very wet mouse. It was so unexpected that it took me a second to process it as a living creature. Mice generally run away, so one rarely gets such a close look at them. The level of detail I was able to see, enhanced by the wet fur clinging close to its body, reminded me of Jerry Pinkney’s detailed illustrations for Aesop’s fable of the Lion and the Mouse.

The mouse looked up at me for several seconds, motionless but for its breathing, and then commenced trying to scramble up the steep, slippery sides of the wet sink. “O Mouse,” I said to it mentally, quoting Alice, “do you know the way out of this pool?” It clearly didn’t, and I realized that I was going to save it just as the lion had spared the mouse in the fable — only I, instead of being a lion, was a man.

I managed to get the mouse safely out of the sink, and it scurried away, no doubt to dry itself off with a nice, dull lecture on the history of William the Conqueror.