Padawan Memoirs: Trouble in the Temple(Part 1)

Several years ago, the Jedi Academy encountered a small problem. Many small problems, actually. Small problems that pooed everywhere; mice.

Master Yoda proposed that they must have been sent to the temple by a Sith Lord of some sort, because Windu had the entire area sprayed for rodents countless times. There's no way an ordinary rodent could get past all the mouse traps and the hazardous spray. These were dark times for the Jedi. Not only would the little vermin leave their happy pellets all over the council chairs and whatnot, they'd chew on pretty much everything. Socks, lightsabers, interior decoration plants, toothbrushes, coffee mugs, refridgerators, underwear...all of a jedi's daily neccesities.

Something had to be done about the issue, so Master Yoda had the padawans each try and catch a mouse so they council could question it. "See me with rabies, want to, you would not. Know where they have been, I do not. Touch them, the council refuses. Besides, immune to mice diseases, padawans are."

If you ask me, I'd have said he was afraid of mice.

Anyways, catching the mice became sort of a game for the padawans...and it was far harder than we'd imagined it to be. Those things are like Waldo in those Where's Waldo? books. They blend in with everything. I was one of the few who actually managed to coax one into my hands by my own method of offering it cheese and coffee. How could it possibly resist?

When I brought the mouse to the council, Master Yoda was standing behind his chair, peering around it at the rodent I had brought. "In the cage over there, put it please." He pointed to a cage that was sitting in the far corner of the room. He didn't come out from behind his chair until the creature was locked securely in the cage. "Now, interrogate it, we will," he declared as he gave the mouse a glare.

---

YODA: Now, sent by whom, were you?

MOUSE: [Blank stare} Squeak.

YODA: Lies! See through you, I can.

MOUSE: [licks itself]

YODA: Such an obscene gesture, tolerated, it will not be! Sent by whom, were you? [His lightsaber is drawn]

MOUSE: [It scurries about its cage, taken aback by the lightsaber. Finally, it stands up upon its hind legs and sticks its nose into the air.] Squeak.

[A murmer of gasps cascades about the room]

YODA: [He clutches his forehead] Forsee this, I did not. Meditate on how to deal with this, I will.

---

Nobody was expecting that. Me, especially. The return of the ancient Sith Lord, Darth Lemur? It seemed almost impossible.

That night I went to sleep in my mouse infested room on my mouse-chewed bed, tormented not by the rodents that nibbled at my toes, but by thoughts of Darth Lemur's return.
















To be continued...