From Afraid Of to Afraid For

Have You Ever Helped Save Someone’s Life?

This morning, I went swimming in our neighborhood pool. It was wonderfully peaceful. No crowds, just a few people around. A window-clean sky above, generous sunshine sending its September regards—still warm, though you can already feel it won’t last much longer. Leaves were slowly drifting down from the trees, touching the water lightly before sailing away like tiny ancient ships.

I finished a lap and turned around. Suddenly, I noticed a large brown spot in the water ahead of me. What a huge leaf, I thought. A second later, I realized the “leaf” was moving. And almost as fast as I was. I swam closer—and nearly lost my breath.

It was a mouse!

First revelation: Mice can swim? Second important piece of context: I am terrified of mice. I’ve encountered them up close only a handful of times in my life, but every single time my reaction has involved genuine horror and screaming at approximately the volume of a fire siren.

But this little guy just kept swimming. So, I kept pace beside him. And then something strange happened. I stopped seeing a mouse and started seeing him.

He swam almost exactly the way I did. His face and ears stayed above the water while his tiny paws worked tirelessly underneath. I couldn’t hear him breathing, but I could see his whiskers moving and his little cheeks filling and emptying with the effort. He was working so hard. His black eyes looked like peppercorns—bright, alert, incredibly alive. We reached the end of the lane together.

By then, apparently forgetting that I was supposed to be terrified, I was shouting,

“Mouse! Mouse!”

The exhausted little swimmer reached for the lane rope and managed to climb onto it. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. I was stunned. He immediately reminded me of Remy in Ratatouille, desperately trying to survive the raging sewer current. Our neighborhood pool was far less cinematic, but I imagine the situation felt just as serious to this little creature. And now our Remy needed rescuing.

One woman asked her husband to bring over a telescopic pool skimmer. The mouse was still clinging to the rope. The man tried to scoop him up and missed.

Watching the large, rigid frame of the skimmer come dangerously close to that tiny body, I stopped him on the second attempt. One wrong hit and our rescue operation could have had a very different ending. Then another woman shook the lane rope.

The mouse fell back into the water. At this point, the Ratatouille soundtrack was playing entirely inside my head. The man lowered the skimmer again. The woman beside us created a small wave, and somehow—success! —the mouse floated straight into the net.

We had him. The man carried the skimmer to the fence and tossed our furry hostage over to the other side, onto the grass.

My neighbor Lisa was standing nearby.

“Do you see him, Lisa? Is he running?” I yelled desperately.

“No, I don’t.”

And suddenly I was worried all over again. Of course, I knew how difficult it would be to spot one little brown creature among the dry grass and fallen leaves, especially if Lisa hadn’t seen exactly where he landed. But another thought had already taken hold.

“What if the fall from that height killed the poor thing?” I asked, mostly into the air.

Another woman reassured me,

“I’ve seen squirrels fall out of trees plenty of times. They just keep running afterward.”

That made me feel slightly better. I sighed and went back to swimming.

But the question kept drilling into my brain: What if we saved him from drowning only to kill him with the fall? And then I realized something else. Less than half an hour earlier, seeing a mouse close to me would have produced a scream worthy of neighborhood emergency services. Now I was swimming laps and worrying about whether the little swimmer had made it safely into the grass.

Somewhere between watching those tiny paws fight through the water and trying desperately to get him over that fence alive, my fear had simply disappeared. I don't think I'm afraid of mice anymore. At least not of this one. I saw his face.

And suddenly he wasn't a disgusting creature anymore. He was God's creature. At first, I was afraid of him. By the end, I was afraid for him.

What do you think? Did our little swimmer make it?

With intention,

Nadia Granski