Eric the wee field mouse had spent the night cuddled in a warm spot in a glorious pile of summer fresh-cut hay piled up in a luxurious stack near the old barn on the Parrish Family Alpaca Farm. He stretched and yawned and looked around where he lay at the others still asleep and wondered what wondrous adventures would lay ahead that day.

The smell of the mound sent his mind traveling back to when he was just a baby wee field mouse curled up near his mum. Oh those were great days and nights to be sure until Mr. Parrish put out a bait that wiped out half the Parrish wee mouse homestead. Surely, Eric reasoned, it must have been a mistake for the old man to have been so brutal in dispatching his kin and he argued that position before the Grand Wee Mouse council deep in the old hay stack when suddenly a pitch fork slammed through the nest and skewered two of the council members and then, just as suddenly as the instrument of their death had plunged through the nest it was pulled out with them attached to the prongs and then they were  tossed over in the pig pen where Daphne and Derril, the two pigs, were happily munching on a fresh pile of kitchen refuse just tossed in their muddy pen. “Oh, look,” said Daphne to Derril, “look at what Mr. Parrish just done. He killed two of the wee mouse council and tossed them into our muddy wallow. “Oh, it’s alright,” Derril replied with a grunt,  “just eat around them. Maybe Chuck the Hawk will see them and come and get them while they are still warm.”

Well, of course, it was a rough awakening for the youngest of the young to see such violence done when they had done nothing to old man Parrish except eat some of his summer corn and maybe a tomato or two and all that nonsense about peeing on Mrs. Parrish’s freshly laundered clothes that she had left out by the clothes line. Mouse pee isn’t all that much and besides, to Eric and the others, it seemed to brighten up the laundry a bit, or so they thought at the time for hygiene was not their thing. No definitely not their thing.  Peeing was a mouse’s right, ancient mouse Norman had said as he was tasting a bit of cheese on a piece of oddly shaped wood. He had grabbed a fresh piece and was about to pop it in his mouth when the strangest thing happened, a metal bar snapped down and severed his head from his body. Well, you can just imagine the shock that caused. But Derril the pig reminded them that Norman was ancient and was eating too much and simply had to go. “Yes,” the remaining bunch all agreed and drug Norman’s body and head off to where Chuck the Hawk might find it. Feeding Chuck was a laborious thing but necessary to protect the wee mouse like Eric from being swept up and eaten  while out for a stroll over by the pigsty.

With all that sleepily being rewound in his head, Eric the wee field mouse simply rolled over, pulled some hay up close, and fell back to sleep.  And, just before falling asleep, he decided he would have to deal with Old Man Parrish soon in retaliation over his attacks on his tribe, for surely this was war, but he wasn’t just too sure how to go about it.