We have an uninvited guest in our office — a mouse. My boss is an animal lover and he is trying to catch him to put him outside, but he won’t do it this week. “It’s too cold for the litter feller,” he said. “That’s what they have fur for,” another employee reminded him.

But I was reminded of a little poem by Gregory Corso:

The Mad Yak
I am watching them churn the last milk they’ll ever get from me.
They are waiting for me to die;
They want to make buttons out of my bones.
Where are my sisters and brothers?
That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap.
And that idiot student of his — I never saw that muffler before.
Poor uncle, he lets them load him.
How sad he is, how tired!
I wonder what they’ll do with his bones?
And that beautiful tail!
How many shoelaces will they make of that!

I don’t imagine the little office mouse feels that way. Nope, with my boss leaving him food, he must be saying to himself, “Hey, somebody likes me in here. Thanks for the grub.”