Forgot to Tell You -- I Need Three Mice for My Science Project

The science fair project proposal was due. The night before, Lily said, "I forgot to tell you. I need to get three mice for my science project. The teacher said that they can be class pets when I'm finished with them."

When she's finished with them I'll be the class pet.

"We're not getting any more rodents, don't you remember?" I said. We had six hamsters in succession. We got the rabbit in an agreement with her that  we wouldn't have any more rodents.

"But these are for school."

I'm a soft touch, so I did try to think of a way to make it work, but all I could do was smell rodent urine in my mind. "How long will your experiment last?" Rodent urine makes a special imprint, even if you think rodents are cute.

"I don't know. A few months?"

Her experiment was about learned helplessness, which is how I was beginning to feel.

I was the one who told her about learned helplessness. I heard a podcast about it and wish I could find it to link to it. The basic story was this: Somebody did an experiment where one group of mice got to go play in the equivalent of a mouse Disney World and the other group had to sit in sad, unstimulating confinement. I don't know what the control group did -- probably housework -- not enough to make you off yourself, but enough so that you felt like your world wasn't toppling in. Over time, the mice that went to the mouse Disney World were confident and ready for anything. The mice that sat in sad confinement day after day grew to believe they were in sad confinement even when taken to mouse Disney World. They were stuck because they thought they were stuck. They had learned helplessness.  I think there's a good life lesson here for teenaged girls. If you don't believe you can do something, you can't.  That's why I'd told Lily the story to begin with.

I could see her attraction to this experiment. More pets. Mice are cute. Get to build a mouse Disney World (would she be able to make the other mouse sit in sad, non-stimulating confinement? I'm sure she couldn't. All her mice would end up in Disney World, I promise.)

But dern it all, I'm done with rodents. The smell! The smell! I told her that she might be able to do it, but she had to buy all the cages. Three different ones. And they had to be where I couldn't smell them.

When her father got home, she gushed to him about it. He isn't a soft touch. "Heck no you can't have three mice. You've got a rabbit -- and no more rodents."

Very clever to try to slip three mice by us in the last minute. "But my proposal is due tomorrow!"

She came up with something else, which was a lesson in non-helplessness on its own.

Comments

[Cheryl]

I raised hampsters in college. Our girls had some when they were small. Hope to never have them again. They were fun, but the smell!

[lorianne]

this sounds remarkably like something I read in a SPQ's book! Either Book of Love or God Save the SPQs!