Mouse Water

True story by Deborah Kane

Time of events: 1961 - 1964

Minburn Grazing Reserve, Alberta, Canada

Twice a week, I tramp through the snow to Home Depot to get bottled water, because I don’t like drinking tap water with all its chemicals. Clean, filtered water is a must for me, but years ago, this wasn’t the case.

In the 1960s, my father managed a government grazing reserve, which is basically a large cattle ranch.

We lived in a house built in the early 1920s made of mud and poplar branches. Coal oil lamps were later replaced by kerosene, and wonder-of-wonders, electricity was brought to the ranch buildings a few years later. Heat was provided by a wood/coal burning stove in the living room, which meant the boys’ bedroom would acquire frost and little snow drifts when a southeast wind blew beneath the back door.

We never did get a furnace in that house, although eventually we did get propane lines to the kitchen stove. Hot water was courtesy of the stove, and we never had to worry about frozen water pipes because the house didn’t have any.

Water was from a well a good distance away, and the weekly bath meant my brothers hauled water from the well to fill a galvanized tub. I’d often go to watch and sometimes help carry the pails.

A concrete cone was built over the well, so we would climb up to the hole in the top which was just large enough for an adult to get through. The only way to get out was by a rope or if someone put a ladder down. Oddly enough, nobody ever did. Since everything that fell in drowned, we were fortunate it wasn’t any of us.

We usually slid a piece of plywood over the hole, but snakes, insects, and mice could still get in. We’d look down to see how many dead mice were floating in the water and haul out as many as we could, but new ones always fell in. As an adult now, I wonder why a pest-proof cover wasn’t built over the hole, but those were different times.

My brother would drop a pail tied to a rope into the water then flip the pail until it tipped over and began to fill and sink. If, when he hauled it up, there was a mouse or two in it, he’d throw the water out and drop the pail in to try again. It was like those games at the fairgrounds where you try to ring a prize – only here we tried not to get a prize in the pail!

We kept hauling up pails until we got one without a mouse floating in it. At that point, we declared victory, slid the plywood back in place, and carried the water to the house.

Since I haven’t had a cold or flu in the past fifteen years, my daughter believes all that mouse water, which was probably filled with hanta viruses and lord knows what all else, gave me some kind of a super immune system! She’ll come down with a cold or flu, worry about giving it to her mother, and I won’t so much as cough. Perhaps I owe my remarkable immune system to the mouse water I grew up drinking.

I’ve no idea if there’s any connection, but people mustn’t be that fragile if my family survived drinking mouse water for years.

Healthy people have strong immune systems, and in today’s day and age, this might be a useful reminder. Maybe we should relax a little.

When I told my daughter this story, she was horrified and insisted I include it here. It’s surprising how past experiences can be almost forgotten – but they might still influence our lives.