The Incredible Monster-Mouse 741

Who knew a mouse could be so terrifying?

Mr. Flop was arguably the world’s most grumpy rabbit. He spent his days watching the house through the cool, white bars surrounding him in his adequately-sized cage, in the most adequately-sized living room and eat-in kitchen hybrid, in the most adequately sized cookie-cutter white house at the corner of First and Main. In fact, everything was so similarly, painfully adequate in Flop’s life that even the slightest changes in his environment could get to him. From the clock’s chime ringing just slightly off the hour mark on the grandfather clock to the girl that gave him pellets coming home later than usual to give him his well-deserved and under served daily feast. Hay just didn’t do it for him like pellets did anymore in his ripe, old age of seven. In bunny years being seven was like being 700 years old... at least that's what it felt like to him since he couldn't hop the same way he used to.

It was an ordinary day in the most ordinary house on earth when Mr. Flop heard it come to attack. Crash, bang, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk...

Mr. Flop tenses up, ears falling back on his fur, his eyes becoming more alert to his surroundings as his heart picks up speed and his prey drive kicks in at the clatter of noises. His back foot thumped heavily on the hard plastic and bedding below him as he scans the area with his peripheral vision and tries to locate the source of the sounds. He sets his sight on a lid of a kitchen pot which was reverberating in a slight circulatory motion from a fall. He looks further up to where the top of the counter was when he makes regrettable eye-contact with it.

There, standing on four terrifyingly pink feet with the most garishly thin and oily coat of fur, was a mouse. Not just any mouse--a monster! He had the beadiest, shiniest eyes that Mr. Flop had ever seen and that was saying something because Mr. Flop had seen his owner "Bastard"--at least, that's what the older woman who always wrapped her arms around him called him--cry after watching some barbaric human game where humans knocked each other over to throw a ball through the big, glass window on the wall in the center of the room. His eyes really shined that day in his frustrations.

For fear of annihilation by what could be one of the smallest old home pests in the universe, Mr. Flop continues to thump his back foot against the bottom of his home, staring at the monster-mouse with the most intimidating stare he could muster... which ended up being a disastrous mistake because the mouse took this as an invitation to come closer. The bunny watched as the mouse climbed down from the counter over a folded up cardboard box, across the floor as quiet as a--well, you-know-what, and made it's way over to the front of his cage which was placed snuggly on the ground in the middle of the carpet.

For a few moments the two creatures just stared at each other, untrusting of one another. Mr. Flop expected the mouse to do something terrifying, horrifying, tantalizing, even... he imagined every way this stranger could ruin his day one way or another. Until the mouse throws his body against the door latch of the front of his cage and lets him out. The black and white bunny didn't know how to react when the mouse did this, staring at him with the same wide and glassy stare that he'd given him before--expecting the mouse to attack him on the inside of his home now--and thumping his back leg harder against the plastic below... but he didn't do anything. The mouse just opened the door to his home and scurried away towards a hole in the bottom of the room's crown molding, disappearing out of sight.

This day ended up being the best of Mr. Flop's life... because it was the beginning of a new daily routine for both him and his new monster-mouse friend. Every day the mouse came to Mr. Flop's cage and let him out so he could hop around the house freely while his owner was out and Mr. Flop started to see the mouse as less and less of a monster every day.

Who knew a mouse could be so friendly?