A Mouse Parable

A man in a white lab coat drops a light brown mouse into a cage. The light brown mouse sits quietly in the middle of a cage. He wears a smile on his mousey face, and he grins as much as a mouse can grin and is oblivious in the way only a happy mouse can be.

As soon as the man leaves, the other mice in adjacent cages creep out of their hidden corners, nests, and orange plastic tubes to see the new mouse, the fresh fish in a sea of cedar wood shavings. Each approaches from his or her adjoining corner with hesitation.


“Hey, new mouse,” the big black mouse in the cage to the left squeals, “how did ya’ end up here?”

The light brown mouse grins. He blinks and sniffs. After a long moment he says, “My name is Jenkins. What’s your name, Mister?”

“My name? You hear that guys…He wants to know my name.” The other mice chuckle at this remark. It’s a surround sound of laughter. Jenkins smiles but doesn’t get what’s funny. “They call me 27BY6. We really don’t have names around here.”

“Nice to meet you, 27BY6.” Jenkins says.

“You don’t really get what this is, do you? You’re in a lab, idiot. We’re test mice. You don’t need to be smiling. Ya’ see, you think your name is Jenkins, but you’ll get a new name, and it’ll be some stupid numbers and digits that don’t mean a thing like mine and C42ER over there.”

C42ER blinks in agreement.

Jenkins’ grin falters for a moment, but returns. He blinks and sniffs. “Oh, they can call me whatever they want. All of you guys can call me Jenkins. I like that name. I think I look like a Jenkins, don’t you think so?”

27BY6’s grimace finally breaks into a grin. “Okay, ‘Jenkins’, keep on smiling. We’ll see how long that lasts. Alright, boys, let Jenkins get acclimated to his new home.”

“Bye—27BY6, C42ER and you other guys and gals—hope to get your names later.” Jenkins yelps as the big black mouse returns to his corner. The other mice follow suit.

Days pass, and 27BY6’s predictions come to pass. Jenkins gets a new official name, 2BR02B;and he is forced to go through a battery of physical challenges and mental tests that normally begins with a needle filled with some liquid that makes Jenkins tired or hyper or see strange things and ends with an electric shock or a food pellet. But to 27BY6’s amazement, Jenkins doesn’t lose the smile or his original name. Actually, he begins to learn all of the other mice’s names. The mice closest to him also get new nicknames like Schimitty, Big Dale, Little Dale, and Mouseface (who really does have the mousiest face a mouse could have).

27BY6 hates it when C42ER doesn’t answer when he calls C42ER. But 27BY6 refuses to call him Schimitty. So they’re not on speaking terms anymore.

After a while all the other mice get names. Jenkins even tries to give 27BY6 the nickname Big Cheese, which 27BY6 actually likes, but he refuses. He is 27BY6. It’s stitched on his collar. He was 27BY6 before Jenkins came and he will be 27BY6 when Jenkins dies. No amount of smiles could change where he was, or what he is. He’s a lab rat. Jenkins could pretend that he was happy, he could name each of the food pellets in his bowl, but it won’t change what he is. 27BY6 knew the score, and he knew that Jenkins would eventually break. 27BY6 would be there to see Jenkins come to the realization that they all were just rats in a cage waiting to be injected with some new “cure” that would end it all.

I would love to tell you that Jenkins rallied Schimitty, Big Dale, Little Dale, and Mouseface to escape their cages with some elaborate plan that involved extraordinary high jinks. But that wasn’t Jenkins’ style. He lived his final months happy with Schimitty, the Dales, and his other friend. But eventually, and if you ask 27BY6 there’s always an eventually, Jenkins was stuck with a needle that injected something cancerous into his mouse body. The tests stopped because Jenkins couldn’t do anything but lay on his cedar shaving bed. 27BY6 had seen it before and was glad it wasn’t him.

They all watched Jenkins wither underneath the weight of his sickness.

When the time came, all the mice—except 27BY6—decided to gather to their respective corners to say goodbye to Jenkins. Big Dale led the meeting by sharing about the time Jenkins came up with the name for Mouseface. Mouseface smiled a sad smile at the telling. They all shared their stories about how Jenkins was a solid mouse, about how he was someone you could count on, about how he always had something nice to say, about how he was just someone who you wanted to be around.

27BY6 couldn’t handle story after stupid story. He scurried to his corner and yelled, “Shut up. All of you just shut up. He was just a stupid mouse who couldn’t face the facts. Can’t you all see? We’re all stuck here. We are rats. We’re all just living on borrowed time. That could have been you, Schimitty. You could have been stuck with that needle. You could get stuck with it tomorrow. Don’t let him fool you. He’s dying. What did that smile get him?”

When his outburst ended, he looked into the face of Jenkins and saw the same stupid smile. 27BY6 went back to his corner. This time, the other mice did not follow.

And Jenkins died with a smile on his face.