Rampant Cannibalism

My two older girls came upstairs with the shrieking heebeegeebies--a mouse was devouring the carcass of another mouse in our window well! "Eww, eww! "
From their description I gathered they thought a new breed of vicious flesh-eating rodent had moved into the neighborhood. I pointed out that the poor trapped thing was simply out of other options. So they decided to rescue it.

With a long-handled butterfly net and a piece of bread on a string, they freed the beastie to roam the fields round our house.


Ani came to tell us about the rescue, and stayed to obsess some more about the revolting behavior of eating your own kind. It reminded me of the story I had read just that morning in the Old Testament--a woman goes to the king to complain about her neighbor. You see, there was a famine in the land and the neighbor lady had proposed a plan: Let's eat your son today and my son tomorrow. So they ate the first son, but the next day the lady who came up with the plan refused to follow through. The king found this pretty upsetting. (But not for the same reasons the woman did.)

My toddler, Rosalie, also seemed bothered by this tale of maternal munching.
I reassured her, "I would never eat you, Rosalie. I would rather starve to death."
Her response was a flat, "I taste yucky."