This short story is more personal than most.

It’s in honour and memory of Professor Robert McNeill (Neill) Alexander, who taught me, and so many, so much.

(648 words)

One day, a young man with an extraordinary interest in animals picked up a mouse, and played with it in his gentle hands. He wondered about the mouse, and as it was caressed, the mouse wondered about the man.

They studied each other, until the man, content with what he saw, allowed the mouse to leave. He opened his palms, and watched as the mouse leapt from his fingers, awed by how such a small rodent could make such a jump from such tiny legs.

At that moment, the man rubbed his smooth chin, and made a promise to one day understand the mouse, and how it now skipped away. And the freely skipping mouse made a promise to one day understand the man, and how gentle he had been.

The years passed, and with them the man’s insights into the abilities of animals grew in strict accordance with the hair upon his face.

Stroking his beard, he watched spiders weaving, the geometries of their actions floating as gossamer upon his thoughts. Fireflies sparked new theories in his brain, dreams of rampaging dinosaurs chasing his mind in new directions. 

He studied shoaling fish, learning to pilot others as to how life worked. He taught the young about nature as mother chimpanzees teach theirs. In old bones he saw great vigour, and as he matured, he soared with the eagles, resolving the trajectories of their flight, until in his later years, he became a professor of zoological mechanics, knowing enough about the animals with which he shared the world that he inherited the grace and wisdom of a great, aged whale.

Finally, as he had calculated all bodies must, his began to fail. Within his mind he still ran with the cheetahs, and the springing boks they chased, measuring their movements. He swung with the gibbons, to feel how they defied gravity in such brief, graceful arcs. He marched with the ghosts of long dead mammoths, and inspired by the okapis and giraffes, he continued to look up. But one day, his vigour left him, and the now old man with a white beard became bones himself.

He returned to the earth, where the creatures took their turn to study him.

First came the worms, who pushed against him, verifying the resilience of his tissues. Snails slithered up and down his limbs, in awe at their form, until the beetles lifted him onto their backs, carrying him forth to meet his subjects.

Out under the stars, a grass snake confirmed the straightness of his back. A badger applauded his ability to dig, a wildcat his insatiable curiosity. From afar hawks gazed into the professor’s eyes, noting a twinkle that attracted the most beautiful moths, while a langur monkey celebrated the man’s wily looks, as an elephant recognised the size of his heart.

Yet more animals came to record his dimensions: nattering parrots, lonely jaguars, flying frogs, chameleons, an army of ants and a herd of wildebeest queuing to validate his true nature.

Until at last his mouse ran upon him, finding comfort nesting in his long, white beard. It curled up within his palms, feeling one more time his gentle caress.

Then it kept its promise to the man. The mouse surveyed and audited his head. It noted the angles, computed the volumes, did its sums and resolved its equations, until at last, it had the measure of the old professor’s mind, and the great leaps it had made when in life.

Happy that now it finally understood the man, and his gentle nature, the mouse released the old professor, giving him over to the bats and the birds. They lifted him up, feeling his levity and grace, and finally the weight of his soul, until, all studies finished, they let him go, watching as his white beard fluttered on the wind, and he drifted up into the clouds.