CHAPTER 7
Blinker
BLINKER, THE WHITE MOUSE who was the object of Silversides’s rage, had been bred for laboratory research. His fur was pure white, his tail naked, his toes and nose pink. The slightest noise made him jump. The merest hint of danger brought fits of trembling. His eyes—so pink they looked bloodshot—could not bear bright light, a fact that caused him to blink a great deal.
Though he was a frail creature, life had treated Blinker relatively kindly. Instead of becoming part of an experiment, he had gone into a pet store. When still an infant he had been purchased by the girl who lived in Silversides’s house. It was she who gave him his name.
The girl cared for Blinker a great deal. A cage complete with an exercise wheel was bought, along with a sack of the best mouse chow and a bottle of spring water. Sweet-smelling cedar chips lined his cage floor. The girl fed Blinker on schedule, never failing to provide fresh water or to change his cage chips regularly. When home from school she lavished affection on him, kissing and talking to him, carrying him about in her hands, on her shoulder, even in her pocket. She often brought him table scraps, candy, carrot bits, sugar cubes.
Though Blinker was supposed to live in the cage, the girl kept its door open. The only thing that the mouse was not allowed to do was leave the room.
“You are my blinky-winky mousey-wousey, and I don’t want you gobbled up by that nasty-wasty cat,” the girl crooned to the mouse. “So you must stay in our own room.”
Blinker quickly learned the wisdom of this policy. Each encounter with Silversides proved dangerous. Not that Blinker ever learned why he was the object of so much hatred. It was simply a fact of life.
Since the girl went to school and was active in sports, Blinker spent most of his time alone. With the door to the room closed, he spent hours sitting by the window, gazing at the world beyond. To the young mouse, who had no experience other than the girl’s room and his brief sojourn in the pet shop, the outside world was mysterious and appealing. Yet all he saw was a street, a park, other houses, humans, and many cars. Not once did he see another mouse.
Hardly a wonder, then, that Blinker came to believe that all mice—if there were any other mice—were like him: the same color, the same life, the same long, lonely hours staring out of windows from inside houses.
As time went by, Blinker wished the girl would allow him a taste of this outside world. She never did, not once.
There were moments Blinker felt a little peculiar about his desire to go beyond the room and the house. Perhaps, he told himself, this longing to explore was unnatural. Did he not have a life that included the freedom of the room and all the food he could eat, as well as a clean cage with an exercise wheel?
After all, he never saw other mice. Why should he want to go out? Full of guilt, he made himself do extra laps on the cage wheel by way of punishment. Between his desire and his guilt he kept slim, trim, and fit.
Then one day the girl made an announcement: “Blinker, I have to write a report for school, and I’ve decided to write about you. I need to explain all about mice and how you are the most special creature in the world.”
Shortly afterward the girl brought home an armful of books. There was the Oxford Illustrated History of Mice, Martha Stewart’s Your House and Your Mouse, and the Book of World Mice. There was fiction about mice, too, such as The Story of a Bad Mouse, Runaway Ralph, Stuart Little, Abel’s Island, Red Wall, and others.
Blinker had never been much of a reader. The girl’s books usually held little interest for him. He avoided them except when he now and again would chew their bindings. In the current matter he had little choice. The girl not only read to him out loud, but she insisted he read by her side.
At first a reluctant reader, Blinker quickly became deeply absorbed in the books about mice. Long after the girl went to sleep he pored over them. When the girl was at school, he read even more.
These books altered Blinker’s view of the world forever. He discovered that there were many kinds of mice, that most mice lived not in rooms but out in the world, that mice had families, that most of them lived free and independent lives. In short, to Blinker’s utter astonishment, he discovered that the way he lived was the exception.
He went on to read everything in the girl’s room he could get his paws on. In so doing he became highly educated.
This new knowledge made Blinker almost breathless with excitement. Now when he looked out the window, he saw things differently than before. The world, he realized, was something in which he might take part. He began to think he had a right to explore it, to make his own decision as to where he lived. His freedom to go anywhere in the room was nothing more than the freedom to wander about a larger cage. Now he yearned to wander beyond the door, to be truly free.
Blinker was perfectly aware that there were moments when the door was left open. It was only a matter of time when that would occur again. When it did, he kept asking himself, should he or should he not escape? After all, there was the problem of Silversides. What was the point of freedom if it only led to death?
Everything changed for Blinker the night Silversides crept into the room, leaped onto the girl’s bed, and almost caught him. When the girl chased Silversides from her room, she meant to slam the
