Mice, Courage, and Potatoes
A vacation story
I heard that one time a mouse decided to go on vacation in Florida. The poor mouse wanted to escape the fierce predator rats in New York City, but the rats followed him all the way to Orlando!
“Ha Ha, you stupid rats!” the adventurous mouse chortled. “You don’t realize that I’m headed for Disney World, the home of Mickey Mouse! You’ve met your match and should head back to the sewer slime in Brooklyn!”
Just then a vagrant homeless potato stuck out his thumb to hitch a ride. The fearless mouse pulled over. “Hop in,” he said. “I’m on my way to Florida. Where are you headed?”
“I have a date with a peanut in Georgia, and I don’t want to be late.”
“But you’re just a vagrant homeless potato! Who would love you?” the Yankee mouse intoned.
“You’ll never know. You’re heading to Disney World to pay obeisance to teenagers in summer jobs who dress up as mice,” the astute potato reminded him.
Well, that silly mouse, who had spent his whole life eating thrown away hot dogs at Mets games, had an epiphany. He took the next exit, and they both headed to Georgia instead. The rats, of course, being stupid and criminal to boot, kept heading to Florida where they were all eaten by alligators. What they didn’t know is that Mickey Mouse controls all the alligators in the Sunshine State with the power of his mind. He just waves his ears, and they obey.
“It’s true, all the others really are just teenagers in costume, making a few extra bucks for college, but … don’t mess with me EVER!” Mickey told me. “If you’re a rat, stay in Brooklyn!”
Meanwhile, the little mouse and the homeless potato arrived at Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm in Plains, Georgia, where the wise old President and his even more intelligent wife regaled them with stories from the old days when mice, potatoes, and peanuts took care of the whole wide world.
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© “John” Lesly Levin 2023
PS — If you don’t know, before Jimmy Carter was President, he was a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia (among many other things.)
After he was President, he built houses for people without money and helped make sure that elections all over the world were fair.
Mice and rats … well, you find all kinds of things in New York and in Florida, too.
