Which mice and which men, Mr. Steinbeck?

For those of you who are familiar with Scottish dialect, but not quite fluent yet, “gang aft agley” can be loosely paraphrased as “often go awry.”

Mr. Burns apparently hit a nest of mice with a plough one winter. He was so moved by the experience that he wrote a poem, whose full title reads “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough.”

These poets tend to be slightly different. It’s been a while since I used a plough, particularly in winter. However, if I were to use one, it is unlikely I would turn up a nest of mice. Especially where I live. A nest of snakes would be more likely. By the way, do snakes use nests? The vicissitudes of life have left me unable to keep up with such matters.

Anyway, poets are different. What would you do if your plough turned up a nest of mice? If you lived in New York, you would immediately contact your lawyer. Because the government would swiftly swoop down, declare your land a federally protected zone and prohibit any human activity there till it had conducted an analysis of all protected species residing in that neighborhood.

But I don’t live in New York. Where I live, the federal government is a tad more relaxed. So I wouldn’t contact my lawyer. I would probably shrug my shoulders, mutter “c’est la vie” to myself, and go back to ploughing.

By the way, I can bet you that Robert Burns was not a newspaper columnist. What kind of title is that for a poem? “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough.” For one, it is way too long. I don’t know what standards existed for newspaper columnists in those days. But I cannot imagine any modern editor letting that monster of a title slip into print.

Secondly, I would take issue with Mr. Burns regarding his choice of possessive pronouns. Turning her up? In her nest? Bob, pardon my lack of sensitivity, but did you stop to ascertain the gender of said mouse before bursting into poetry? Or did you want to curry favor with your readers of the female persuasion? What about us poor males?

If I were you, Bob, I would have re-titled the piece “To a Mouse, on Turning Her or Him (or Him or Her) Up in Her or His (or His or Her) Nest with the Plough.” It’s a little tough to rhyme. But guys in your time were good with stuff like quatrains, iambic tetrameter, iambic trimeter and all that jazz. You would have managed.

And, incidentally, Mr. Burns was fortunate that social media was not in full bloom in that era. Imagine tweeting that title alone. Wouldn’t leave many characters for the body of the work.

As I was saying, poets are different. I have outlined above the possible reactions of today’s urban and rural dwellers to a “plough meets mice” incident. Other possibilities no doubt exist. I could outline those, but I suspect that would lead to accusations of losing my laser-like focus.

I seriously doubt that the denizens of our wondrous land would react in the manner dear old Bob did in Scotland. Tell me honestly, would you embark upon a conversation with a mouse? Under any set of circumstances? And I am excluding Disney characters here, for the smarty-pants among you.

Now, I must concede, you could possibly say, “Get thee gone, mouse, I’ll none of thee,” if you were a fan of William Shakespeare. But there the conversation would end. Unless the mouse had something to say to you.

You would not wax philosophical about the value (or lack thereof) of foresight and building shelters and making plans. Not with a mouse. No sir.

Anyway, that’s just me. I really don’t know about you.

By the way, when I started out, I had wanted to talk about John Steinbeck and his choice of book titles. But, as the Scots would say, my plans “gang aft agley.”