Hope is the thing with whiskers...

An entire childhood of hope has been vindicated at long last, at the tender age of 29, in the most unexpected way.
Last Tuesday evening S hollered "the dogs have something!"as he ran from the house. Turns out Tika and her "BFF" (our neighbor's dog, Cali) had decided to be cats for the night and caught themselves a field mouse. I pinned the dogs as S, with gloved hands, pulled the drool-covered little guy from certain death. Its whiskers were twitching and its chest was heaving, with no visible puncture wounds.
How many times have I picked up a bird, a mouse, a vole, its chest heaving, with no visible punctures wounds, and stood there with it on the very edge of death, wondering if this time, this one time, it would pull back?
Too many times to count. And every time it was game over. Even if the physical injuries were nonexistent, the shock was always too much. The next morning I'd find a stiff carcass where a freaked out little rodent used to be. I know why the caged bird doesn't sing -- because it's dead by morning.
Despite the impregnable evidence to the contrary, S and I did the unthinkable and decided to build an out-patient mousie hospital. I found a shoebox. Lined it with paper towel. Bundled up some kleenex for nesting type materials. Put in a bottle lid with water and a tiny pile of bird seed. And we placed the mouse inside -- still paralyzed, still heaving its chest, not moving a voluntary muscle -- partially under the kleenex, crossed our fingers, and closed the box for the night.
A couple hours later, no noise from the box.
A couple hours after that, we head to bed. S says he thinks he hears scratching.
The next morning, I tiptoe to the laundry room, ready to accept defeat. I tilt the lid back...
...and there is the mouse, not so much dead as confused, rising to his hind legs, whiskers ablaze with alarm and curiosity, looking at me as if to say, "WHO THE HECK ARE YOU AND WHERE AM I??"
Later that day S would text me to say he'd set it free in the woodpile and it left with all the joyous panic of a survivor to points unknown. The mouse and I would share a rare moment of symmetry; just as he described it LEAPING from the box like it was shot from a gun, that morning I put the lid back down before the thing escaped and LEAPED across the house to my still sleeping husband to greet him with the rooster crow: "IT LIVED!! IT LIVED! IT LI-II-III-IIVED!!"