Jumping Mouse

I read blogs, and one of the blogs I enjoy is idealawg. Last week, I caught a tweet from the blogger that said the jumping mouse had been added to a list of protected species.

One of my favourite stories is the legend of Jumping Mouse. So I tweeted back and asked if the writer knew the story. A few minutes later, I had sent the link and said that it was fun to be able to give something back to a blogger whose work I enjoyed.

The course I was training ends with a story circle. One of the early stories mentioned an eagle. Halfway around the circle, there was a story about a frog and a mouse. I ended the circle, as I had planned the night before, with the story of Jumping Mouse, a mouse who is given its long, strong legs by a magic frog. Later, the frog turns the mouse into an eagle.

If I were writing a short story, it would seem too coincidental to have all the story elements appear before I told my story, an overly neat metaphor for the class coming together on common ground. But I wasn't writing fiction: this is simply what happened.

Often truth stretches our belief much harder than fiction dares.

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