By Jim Hagarty
Thank the stars we live in a country like Canada with a public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Only on CBC Radio could an interview be heard with a scientist who has researched what makes a mouse happy.
Listening to this interview on Saturday afternoon, several thoughts occurred to me (once I got past the obvious one: Why am I listening to this interview?)
Would a life spent studying such subjects as the happiness of mice be a life misspent?
Once the answer to the questions surrounding a mouse’s contentment levels have been established, will the resulting knowledge have added anything meaningful to the world?
But this was my overriding feeling on hearing what I was hearing: Call me hardhearted, which I’m sure I am, but I don’t really give a fiddler’s fork whether mice are happy or suffer from chronic depression.
As I write that last line, I realize it seems sort of mean but if I was a scientist – and I could have been except for a tragic shortage of brains which has plagued me since birth – I believe I could have found a million or two more important things to study before I turned my attention to the serenity of the humble mouse. Things such as why grilled cheese sandwiches are not considered high cuisine or why Toronto doesn’t have an NHL team.
Scientist or no, however, I think I could have come up with a few suggestions as to what would make a mouse happy, even without a few years of intense study.
I’m guessing some sort of steady food supply might put a smile on its furry little face. A compost pile, say, with a twice weekly deposit of kitchen scraps delivered fresh and on time.
A cat epidemic such as distemper, for example, which can wipe out a well-populated barn in a couple of weeks might be guaranteed to cheery up the gloomiest rodent, I would expect.
And somewhere warm to spend the winters, such as above my basement ceiling, for example, would probably cause a mouse to sit back one day and remark, “Ah, this is the life.”
But, what would I know?
Our real researcher referred to above, did an experiment. He placed a female mouse in a cage with a male mouse. This seemed to make both of them quite happy as they got busy planning a family.
Now, this is what separates the research of an authentic scientist from a piker like myself. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that a couple of lonely mice thrown together on a blind date like that might cheer up almost immediately.
But here’s where the real science came in. The researcher recorded the sounds they made, too high for the human ear to perceive, then slowed them down four times and played them on the radio. He pointed out how the two mice were singing to each other prior to, well, you know, doing other things to each other.
Providing one of them wasn’t tone deaf, I could see how music, in this case, could have charms to soothe the savage breast.
And how they would live happily ever after
