Baby Mouse's Heroic Adventure

One Autumn day the sun rose above the great oak trees to reveal a wooden cabin set brilliantly within the forest. An old lady, the kind who wove her own clothes and stirred her own stew, occupied the establishment by her lonesome. Right below her feet lived a mommy mouse and a baby mouse who used the cabin as their shelter. The two of them relied on each other. They lived day by day and meal by meal.

Each morning, mommy mouse gave baby mouse an errand to run so that they would be able to eat supper that night. This morning mommy mouse told baby mouse to go out and find some berries and wash them in the river before returning home. So baby mouse set out on his adventure. He jumped over sticks and slid under leaves as his little heart was pounding out of his little chest. In his little hands he grasped a tiny basket that he made by himself, big enough to hold just the right amount of berries to feed him and his mother. Finally, baby mouse found a berry bush that was lush with bright red berries and went on his way to the river that runs right by the cabin. Baby mouse arrived at the river and began to wash the berries when an unwelcome visitor approached him.

A long, scaly, slithering snake swam through the river and snatched the berries right up. Baby mouse squeaked as loudly as he could at the snake asking for him to return the berries so that he and his mother could survive another night. The snake pondered his request and showed sympathy for the poor baby mouse's situation and asked just one thing in order to give the berries back. The snake wanted a straw hat so that he could impress all the lady snakes down at the tavern around the bend of the river. The baby mouse had no choice but to agree to this request and set off to the only place he knew that might have straw hats: the barn upon the hill.

Baby mouse arrived at the barn and found a great big Clydesdale horse who ironically enough was weaving a tiny straw hat, the size that would perfectly fit a snake, within her stable. Baby mouse timidly approached the horse and asked if he could have the hat so that he could give it to the snake who would give him the berries so that he and his mom could have supper. The horse felt for baby mouse and said that she would give him the hat if he got her a toothbrush so that her breath would not smell while she was on a date with the Shetland pony from the neighboring barn. Baby mouse agreed and went to the only place that he knew a toothbrush would be: the lady's cabin under which the baby mouse lives.

He arrived at the cabin and carefully shimmied his way between the door frame and door and tiptoed his way to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the old lady was in the bathroom and the faucet was running, but baby mouse knew that it was getting late and that his mother had to be starving, so baby mouse burst through the bathroom door, up the wall and onto the counter where he saw the toothbrush lying. He swiftly grabbed the toothbrush and ran for the front door before the old lady saw anything. Baby mouse went back to the top of the hill and exchanged the toothbrush with the horse for the tiny straw hat. He went back to the river to find the snake and exchanged the hat for his berries and went back below the cabin where his mom was waiting anxiously for her next meal and for her baby to return.

Author's Note: I took inspiration from "The Liver," which is a Turkish Fairy Tale. The original story followed a girl whose mom told her to go out and get some liver so that she could cook it and serve it for their dinner. The girl gets the liver and takes it to a pond to wash it off but a bird swoops it up and bribes the girl to get it something in return for the liver. Then the girl falls into a loop of exchanging things in order to get her liver back including the bird asking for barley, then the man with the barley asking for rain, then the man who answered the prayers asking for incense, then the man with incense asking for shoes, then the shoemaker with the shoes asking for ox-leather, then the man headed who could make leather asking for ox hide, then the ox asking for straw in exchange for its hide, then the man with the straw asking for a kiss in which the girl agrees and goes on to exchange everything until she has the liver back. So I followed the same plot of the original story, but I changed the main characters and made them animals and added some personal flare.

Bibliography: "The Liver" by from "Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales" by Ignacz Kunos