May 9, 2012

Of Cats and Mice and Greek and Hebrew

  
The following story was posted on by a Facebook friend recently.

A mother mouse and a baby mouse are walking along when suddenly a cat attacks them. The mother mouse shouts “BARK!” and the cat runs away. “See?” the mother mouse says to her baby. “Now do you see why it’s important to learn a foreign language?

I guess this is why we are supposed to learn Greek and Hebrew!
  

2 comments:

veryrarelystable said...

I’ve heard a contrary version of this joke –

A mouse woke up one morning in his hole in the skirting board of a house, and sniffed the air. There was the unmistakable smell of cheese about, so he went to the entrance of his hole and looked out into the sitting room in front of him. There, just a few metres away was a small lump of cheese on the carpet. Now this mouse was a wise mouse, and not wishing to leap to conclusions he waited a bit and listened. After a while he heard the distinctive if quiet sound of purring. “Ah, it’s a trap!”, he thought, “my erstwhile enemy, the house cat, is waiting to pounce from somewhere the moment I leave my hole.” So he stayed in the safety of his hole all day.

The next morning he woke up and there was an even stronger smell of cheese. He went to the skirting board entrance of his hole and spied, on the sitting room floor, a bigger piece of cheese than the day before. But being a wise mouse he waited and listened, and again he heard the same soft purring sound and realised the cat must be somewhere just out of eyesight. Evening and morning came the second day(!).

On the third day he rose, went to the entrance of his hole, and saw a massive piece of cheese on the sitting room carpet, those few tantalising metres away. By now he was very hungry indeed, having eaten nothing for the last 2 days. But still he waited and listened. After a while he suddenly heard loud, sharp barking. “Great!”, he thought, “the cat’s tied up with her enemy”, and he made dash from his skirting board hole into the sitting room towards the cheese. He hadn’t got a yard when bang, the cat sprung from her hiding place, grabbed the mouse, and swallowed him whole. Turning to her kittens in the corner she said, “and that’s the advantage of learning a second language!”.



A bit longer than your version, I know, but if it’s recounted well it works a treat.

Charles Savelle said...

Funny. Thanks for sharing. Now that I think of it, the cat in the story reminds me of some of my Hebrew and Greek profs!!!