Summer Hugs

Summer is the season for many things. Most especially it is the season for frolicking outside and eating outside and being silly outside. The important word here would rightly seem to be "outside." Going on adventures to seek friends and smells and treasure of all kinds, outside. Summer is Mousie's favorite time of year, along with autumn, winter, and spring, but we'll get to those in due course. For now, let's talk about summer.

What does summer bring?

No, I'm not talking about bugs or thunderstorms or sweltering heat - these only happen occasionally and usually can be avoided, especially by a resourceful mouse.

Foods? Mmmmm - fresh peaches and cherries and melons and nectarines and blueberries and strawberries! Oooo, strawberries - they even taste like summer, which really actually tastes like cotton candy. Mousie loves strawberries. They're just the right size to hug! So Mousie went on an adventure and found the perfect gem of a strawberry, hidden in what else but a leafy strawberry bush. And he hugged it.

Mousecafé

One of Mousie's favorite things is to sit in a café, watching the world go by, nibbling a sugar crystal or a crumb of cheese or some crusty bread - or sometimes indulging his secret love of coffee. Mousie has to be a bit careful with coffee because a caffeinated mouse is a very crazy thing, indeed, and Mousie doesn't want to scare the other guests at the café (who are often very surprised and amused to see Mousie at the café in the first place) and does want to be able to sleep at night! So he gets the smallest coffee he can find, which is invariably espresso and also invariably still much too big! It also has the benefit of coming in a mouse-sized cup that Mousie can hug if the weather turns a little chilly. Mousie likes that coffee is all of the things he is not - it is big and dark and aggressive and abrasive, smoky and hot, a little intimidating, and an acquired taste. It gives him courage to tackle the rest of the day.

Reuben the Sandwich

True to form, Mousie went out one day and found another giant food. In fact, it turned out to be another sandwich. (Mousie has started to wonder whether to be a sandwich one must also be HUGE...) This sandwich's name was Reuben. And Reuben is a truly beautiful sandwich - warm and juicy, crispy where important and delicate and plush where delicious. Reuben's only problem is being simply too big. And wherever Reuben goes, the potato salad, pickle, and cookie follow. Mousie was overwhelmed. And then very very full. And then very happy and very sleepy! Mousie thinks that once a year is about the most often he could ever visit the house of Reuben, despite wishing he could go every week!

Mousie's Wheel

Mousie gets lots of exercise scampering around the neighborhood and the planet so he has no need for a typical "hamster wheel." (Hamsters, unlike Mousie, are generally lazy and need the exercise.) Instead, Mousie likes to use a different kind of wheel when he goes on adventures with Sven the Volvo. Sven is friendly and capacious and comfortable and likes being tickled by Mousie's little paws as Mousie points him in the right direction. And when Mousie gets tired he can curl up and let autopilot take over, safe and comfy in the knowledge that Sven will carry him safely to the stars and back.

Sandy Mouse

Mousie is often skeptical of the supposed pleasures of going to the beach. For so small a mouse it is so far across the hot, rough sand to the water - even on the narrowest beach! And once he gets to the water he usually realizes he doesn't particularly like being wet and even the smallest waves send him soaked and sprawling. And his fuzz gets matted and he has to go take a bath to feel himself again... As if these issues weren't challenging enough, there is the ever-present seagull problem. They think Mousie looks like a tasty mouse - an understandable mistake given their severely limited intelligence and extreme, indiscriminate gluttony!

So right now you're thinking, "Why would Mousie, or I, for that matter, ever go to the beach?!" Your reasoning is your own, but in Mousie's case he indulges his love of basking in the tropical sun by taking full advantage of his own portability and the protective presence of larger benevolent creatures known as humans - strange as they may be. In short, he hitches a ride, comme d'habitude.

Is this Paris?

Mousie and Flippers found themselves in Paris on a very particular, peculiar day. It seems the Champs Elysees was turned from a boulevard roaring with cars and trucks into a colossal garden, full of things green and growing. There were forests and lawns, rows of peas and squash, and even a mouse-sized beach of sea salt. This being France, the first thing Flippers found was lavender - wonderful wonderful lavender. He had trouble staying awake after this photograph was taken:Mousie then found an olive tree. It was only a little olive tree but Mousie is only a little mousie so it was very big for him. He liked climbing it because he could finally see above the heads of the millions of people coming to see the new Paris park.And then he found some tomatoes. This was starting to make him a very hungry mouse - all of the perfect ingredients for a fabulous salad. Unfortunately nothing was quite ripe so Mousie had to be content with feeding his imagination...Then Flippers found something entirely unexpected - family! As is a well known fact, all spikey things are, of course, related. Since Flippers and pineapple are both also very sweet, they are, in fact, close cousins. It was a joyous reunion.Finally Mousie found his own private spa - a square meter of pure and natural French grey sea salt from Normandy. But the sun was very strong and Mouise quickly became thirsty so he and Flippers went off in search of water and instead found break-dancers. Now Mousie wants to learn how to break-dance.

Across the world and off again!

Mousie's backpacking trip with Basil the Bear went to Africa! Land of hippopotamouses and mousephants and wildemouses and rhinocermouses and the mousepanzee. Mousie so dearly wanted to see these amazing creatures, but alas, it was the dry season and Mousie was in the Gambia. There were lots of goats, and some cows, and chickens and donkeys, and one friendly baby antelope, but mostly what there was was a surfeit of peanuts. Mousie likes peanuts, but only so much. They are a distant relative, after all - Mousie has sometimes been classified as a nut. But back to the point, few beasts. There were also some birds, but most of them would have liked to eat Mouise so he stayed far away from them. (The day the vultures visited the village Mouise stayed curled up inside his sack inside his bag inside the backpack...)

So Mousie had to find amazing things to do, and boy were there amazing things to do! Lots of people calling him "Mousebab!" and wanting to know his name and wanting five Dalasi, but how Mousie could carry five Dalasi nobody knows. Lots of really noisy and bouncy and old and very large (for a mouse, not a person) buses to ride to other places. The mysterious, but delicious, Tapalapa and the Niebbe Sandwich (distant cousin of the muffaletta.) Lots of dusty paths to walk... There was no end to Mousie's scampering about. He even got some fabric and found a tailor to make him a mouse-sized Gambian shirt.Actually, Mousie is about to get dusty all over again, so he has postponed his bath until after he returns from his next adventure (on which he might visit a very old wall while avoiding crafty sand dunes and may meet a leprechaun who will give him a thimbleful of uisce beatha.)

Abaraka bake, shalom, and slainte.