Amos goes to new mouse city

Editor’s note: Amos is a church mouse, who types by hurling himself at the keys, but he can’t operate the capital shift keys, and he shuns punctuation marks – except hyphens and dashes.

Of late, Amos has become obsessed with the thought of missions. One day, he walked across a picture of a starving, orphaned mouse in India, and he claims that the innocent little fellow’s gaunt face and emaciated whiskers have haunted him every night until he decided to do something about it.

For one thing, he replaced all of his “Cheeses of the World” posters (which lined the walls of his cozy matchbox home) with pictures of gaunt, starving animals from all over the world.

In addition, he has become a regular contributor to the Worldwide Three-Blind-Mice Aid to the Disabled Fund and has started shipping all his old woolen mittens (which he found once upon a time but thinks they must have belonged to three little kittens) to all the poor Eskimo mice in Alaska.

He even doubled his donation to the Lottie Mouse Christmas Offering, but he still felt that he should be more personally involved in the mission effort. When the opportunity opened for him to go with a mission team to New Mouse City, his eagerness to go bubbled over into this week’s column.

amos goes to new

mouse city

the lord has told me to meet

him in new mouse city boss

that s where he said the

harvest will be

at first i was so excited boss

i nearly forgot to pack my

bible and then i was so ashamed

of my forgetfulness that i

debated whether i ought to

take me or not

it didn t take the devil long to

pick up the message on his

new-fangled intercom system

and when he approached me he

wasn t dressed in anything so

recognizable as a fire-engine

red serpent s suit

wrapped in a kindly old saint s

shawl he offered me a green

stomach that trembled all

the time

he came to me again in

explorer s boots and

a knapsack brandishing

for me a heart inflated

with lusty adventure

retreating then to the

saintly shawl he came

to me a third time looking

more like a gangster s

moll than a kindly old

saint - and he tommy-

gunned me down with

my inadequacies

while i was lying

in a heap there

at the bottom

of the valley road

jesus passed by

and gave me enough

strength to look

to him

and in looking to

him i was lifted up

and filled to

balloon-size with

his spirit

there was a big

hole in my balloon

and his spirit kept

flowing out but i

never deflated

and my balloon is

flying me to new

mouse city boss but

sometimes my tail

hangs down and

drags the ground

the devil steps on it

once in a while but

one of these days

he ll get a hot

foot for what

he s been doing

amos

p s - next time i ll be

home boss keep the

coffee brewing

the cheese of life

sure has a nice

flavor here