LETTERS FROM HOME: THIEF OF LONELY PUPPIES, MURDERER OF MICE

Nov. 7, 1996

Dear Leslie,

DC is threatening an increase in our menagerie, which is now at four birds, two dogs and holding. The prospects are two puppies caged in a yard near her clinic. She thinks they're starved for attention and only half-kiddingly says thievery may be the only solution.

She asked the family's little girls if she could make a trade -- their dogs for the night in exchange for Halloween treats. Her intent being to deluge the puppies with all the love she thinks they've been missing.

The little girls said no, but they'd trade their dogs for ours for the night. Much as DC wants to play with those puppies, she wasn't willing to turn Hank and Lucy loose on these innocent little girls and their family.

In that case, the 6-year-old and 8-year-old said, you can trade us your husband. DC did not say whether this was tempting.

We have been having a different kind of animal trouble lately. The mice who live in the backyard and park decided to come indoors for the winter. In theory, I believe that humans and animals can co-exist and subscribe to the teaching of doing the least harm. But DC was afraid her birds were being traumatized by birdseed marauders. And when you find mouse droppings among the foodstuffs and in the silverware drawer, and a sweating gray creature emerges from beneath the stove burner when you turn the oven on, it's time to consider whether you have enough wild indoor pets.

Then my mother videotaped a TV broadcast about a fatal virus mice can pass along. The virus can be ingested through dust that has come into contact with their droppings. It's enough to make you scared of a little mouse.

Live traps were set with no success. These were Saturday morning cartoon mice. Poison was rejected as inhumane. So the choice was the old-fashioned trap that snaps the life out of a mouse in an instant. Maybe it's better, karmacally speaking, if you kill swiftly.

After one night, one dead mouse. We hoped we'd dispatched a very busy loner but suspected there were accomplices. The traps kept going off all week long. DC said she sometimes could hear them in the night.

Much as she denied it, I think DC enjoyed ridding the household of mice. She seemed to take some pride in setting her traps every night and checking them in the morning. "Got one," she'd say instead of "Good morning."

Now that the snapping has stopped, eight mice are dead and buried somewhere in a garbage dump. Guess that would be a mouse's idea of heaven. Karmacally speaking, I'm not so sure.

Have you seen "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet"? Guess that's as opposed to John Grisham's "Romeo and Juliet." We weren't expecting much. "The fat one said it's a high-schoolish mess," I told DC.

DC can't remember which one's Siskel and which one's Ebert, so they've been reduced to "the fat one" and "the bald one." Much as I'd prefer to be politically correct, a better way to differentiate between the two has been elusive.

But if this "Romeo and Juliet" is high-schoolish, I want to go back. OK, the beginning is a bit of a fanciful spaghetti Western set in Venice Beach. Flashy guns and gangs and cars souped up with science fiction curves. Pulsing soundtrack.

I was prepared to be embarrassed to be sitting there among the almost entirely teen-aged audience members. But once Romeo and Juliet meet, the magic begins. Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio are the best actors of their generation and their faces are luminous. Shakespeare's familiar words spoken in American English lose none of their poetry. We sat transfixed to the end, accepting how bitter it would have to be.

If I were a high school English teacher I would use this opportunity to rescue Shakespeare from pedantry and give it back to the students. Producers and directors always say they want to make Shakespeare accessible. This is accessible and not only to teen-agers.

If Shakespeare were alive he'd be making films like "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet."

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.