In the early 1950’s we spent five summers on a sheep outfit my father managed near the Flattops, a unique mountain range in northern Colorado. A memory from that first summer has stayed with me for more than half a century. Not traumatic, just odd. I still don’t know what to make of it.
I was seven and my sister was an infant. The ranch foreman and his wife had two teenagers. I had no one to play with except the ranch dog, a border collie called Shep, who slept in the barn.
I remember the elaborate game I played with Shep. The activity began in the barn. I would open the heavy wooden lid to the oat bin and, with a coffee can, catch one of the surprised mice scurrying across the bed of oats, diving for the dark corners. Shep would follow me into the corral, where I crouched on the ground, let the mouse loose, called “Siccum, Shep,” and watched the dog chase the mouse and kill it. “Drop it, Shep,” I would command and then tell the dog to go back to the barn. His part in the game was over.
The next site was a sandy inlet in the creek between the barn and the house. I remember the child-sized beach, the clean sand, and how beautiful ordinary rocks looked beneath the water.
I gently dumped the dead mouse onto the sand and used the coffee can to dig a grave. With a stick, I nudged the furry corpse into the hole, covered the hole with the pile of cold sand, and tamped it down with both hands. With pieces of tall grass and dry twigs, I made a cross to mark the mouse grave. The game was over.
I don’t remember thinking one way or another about the dog chasing the mouse and killing it. Dogs liked chasing and killing. No one on the ranch liked mice.
Although I am not ashamed of the experience, I feel a shadow of guilt that I should remember it with such pleasure. That afternoon—one or many, I can’t remember—seems a summation of the sensory pleasures of ranch life: the darkness of a barn in daylight; the scent of oats, hay, leather, horse manure; the companionship of a dog; and the sound of water in a year-round creek, something westerners treasure even more than the scent of sage after rain.
I remember the pleasure of solitary play, of being lost in the story I was telling myself about the life and death of a field mouse. I do wonder what my childhood game says about me, if anything. My husband tells me I am making too much of it. Of course, he is one of Shakespeare’s “wanton boys” whose summer days were filled with hunting and killing small things.
Sometimes I think I should have been in the house, playing with dolls, making up stories about a mommy and daddy and a baby in a crib, rather than hanging out in the barn catching mice for the dog to kill.
I was seven and my sister was an infant. The ranch foreman and his wife had two teenagers. I had no one to play with except the ranch dog, a border collie called Shep, who slept in the barn.
I remember the elaborate game I played with Shep. The activity began in the barn. I would open the heavy wooden lid to the oat bin and, with a coffee can, catch one of the surprised mice scurrying across the bed of oats, diving for the dark corners. Shep would follow me into the corral, where I crouched on the ground, let the mouse loose, called “Siccum, Shep,” and watched the dog chase the mouse and kill it. “Drop it, Shep,” I would command and then tell the dog to go back to the barn. His part in the game was over.
The next site was a sandy inlet in the creek between the barn and the house. I remember the child-sized beach, the clean sand, and how beautiful ordinary rocks looked beneath the water.
I gently dumped the dead mouse onto the sand and used the coffee can to dig a grave. With a stick, I nudged the furry corpse into the hole, covered the hole with the pile of cold sand, and tamped it down with both hands. With pieces of tall grass and dry twigs, I made a cross to mark the mouse grave. The game was over.
I don’t remember thinking one way or another about the dog chasing the mouse and killing it. Dogs liked chasing and killing. No one on the ranch liked mice.
Although I am not ashamed of the experience, I feel a shadow of guilt that I should remember it with such pleasure. That afternoon—one or many, I can’t remember—seems a summation of the sensory pleasures of ranch life: the darkness of a barn in daylight; the scent of oats, hay, leather, horse manure; the companionship of a dog; and the sound of water in a year-round creek, something westerners treasure even more than the scent of sage after rain.
I remember the pleasure of solitary play, of being lost in the story I was telling myself about the life and death of a field mouse. I do wonder what my childhood game says about me, if anything. My husband tells me I am making too much of it. Of course, he is one of Shakespeare’s “wanton boys” whose summer days were filled with hunting and killing small things.
Sometimes I think I should have been in the house, playing with dolls, making up stories about a mommy and daddy and a baby in a crib, rather than hanging out in the barn catching mice for the dog to kill.
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