We had prepared for bears, cougars, coyotes, bobcats, storms, power outages, a freezing wellhead, and the occasional tree deciding it had stood long enough. Twenty-plus years of mountain ranch life have taught us to think in terms of the big natural disruptions. But we can never really be prepared for a little mouse in our pantry. We believed ours had always been mouse-proof.
We believed wrong.
The infiltrator to our heavily secured pantry, our Fort Knox of food storage, was vectored inside by the grifting of our newest security guard. Monster, the former stray and our freshly recruited feline, was fooled into thinking he was disposing of the enemy after presenting it to the commander. Instead, Monster allowed the saboteur, acting dead, to make sneaky use of his access badge and get inside the pantry.
For three days, it wreaked havoc.
By the time the enemy was discovered, the damage unfolded layer by layer. Bags had been sampled, and shelves were decorated with the unmistakable evidence of the intruder's poop and detritus. Exactly what kind of entrenched ramparts were being built with toothpicks and pasta in the back corner was beyond our intelligence scouts.
Suddenly, everything had to come out!
Every can, every box, every forgotten jar.
The pantry vomited itself into the dining room and kitchen. Canned goods became refugees camped across tabletops. Flour and sugar found temporary asylum wherever there was space.
Our sanitizing bombing came first. Scrubbed top to bottom with chemical warfare. With the enemy's supply line disrupted, they retreated to the connected, unexplored caverns under the stairs. We set out a couple of old-model traps. There was only one bold interloper involved.
How difficult could it be?
The opponent proved to be a worthy one.
After Day Five, we sent in requisitions to the armory for better weapons. The enemy had overcome the older traps with ease. We pulled out our copy of The Art of War:
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
The older traps were WD-40'd. The dreaded sticky panels were laid. Even the bucket of watery death, with its floaty peanut-butter aluminum-foil boat as a lure, was called up for service.
Then came the new-model trap.
It was so rabidly sensitive that it startled the soldiers several times, almost causing injury to our own troops, the human’s fingers.
Also from The Art of War: “In the midst of chaos, there is opportunity.”
Who knew there was such old pickling stuck in the back? The stale cracker packs from several years ago?
I digress.
All was set on Day Six as the war was waged over an entire weekend. The sight of chaotic dishevelment became the elephant in the room as guests checking in saw the scene behind the reception counter. We sheepishly had to tell the tale too many times.
When victory finally arrived, it came with an unexpected realization.
The pantry had never been cleaner!
We didn't simply restore the pantry; we gave it an overhaul and restocked it.
Permaculture has taught me that nature rarely operates through isolated events. Everything exists in relationship with everything else. We tend to notice the large disruptions, but healthy ecosystems are often governed by the smallest participants. Like our little mouse, those small participants can cause disruption, too.
A handful of fungi beneath the soil helps determine the health of our meadow. Earthworms can quietly reshape the garden paddocks. Pollinators, disturbing pollen as they move among flowers, become architects of our peach and plum harvests.
Scientists tell us that our own bodies are less individual organisms and more bustling communities. Trillions of microscopic lives live within our microbiome, influencing digestion, immunity, and even our moods. The more we discover about these hidden relationships, the more we realize that the health of the whole often depends upon the smallest things we can barely see, yet can leverage.
In permaculture, that translates into a cooperative stacking of functions. A barn stock tank, fed by rain gutters, holding a micro-pond of goldfish and snails, becomes like kombucha for alpacas, serving up good microbes that are pre- and probiotic when they drink the water.
Healthy fish. Healthy bacteria. Healthy rumen. Healthy alpaca. Healthy ecology.
The barnyard ecology means paying heed to microbes, insects and bugs, tiny mites and fleas, and, at times, larger rats or field mice.
The mouse in our pantry became our teacher.
