If you give a mouse a cookie...

...it’s going to want a glass of milk. If you give it a glass of milk, it’s going to ask for a straw. If you give it a straw, it’s going to be much too big, and that little mouse will surely asphyxiate on the sharp red plastic instrument of death you gave it to drink the milk to wash down the cookie you gave it.

Soon enough the mouse’s family will learn about what transpired and they will file a wrongful death lawsuit. Because the mouse you so heartlessly killed has such a huge family, they have many connections and hire some of the best attorneys they can get. The initial legal proceedings will seem to drag on forever, and no matter how you beg and plead, the judge will refuse to throw out the case simply because “they’re mice!”

When the trial proper finally does start, it will not only be a major financial drain, but it will be an emotional one as well. The long nights staying up with your defense attorneys (who are frankly no match for the legal team representing the deceased mouse’s family) makes your wife feel neglected even though you’ve explained to her time and again that this is all necessary if she doesn’t want her husband going to prison for killing a mouse.

A few months into the trial however, you and your wife have decided on a trial separation (y’know, just to give each other some space (which you already had because of the lawsuit)). With the added stress of your wife having left you, the trial begins to eat away at your sanity.

Every day you have to fight to ignore all of the furious squeaking coming from all of the mice in the gallery, all there with the hope that you be found guilty. When it finally comes time for you to take the stand, you can’t believe what you are seeing: mice damn near everywhere, and all of them hate you (except for maybe Terrence, because he’s always had it in for Steve (the mouse you killed) but he has to act like he’s angry so he doesn’t arouse the suspicion of his family).

Just as you are about to snap under all of the pressure and sheer lunacy of what has consumed your life over the past 11 months, Steve (the mouse you apparently didn’t kill) storms into the courtroom and demands they set you free, as all along it was Terrence that tried to kill him. Terrence denies it, but he is arrested on the spot and you are allowed to go free.

Months pass.

Your wife has come back, and things are essentially back to normal. Unfortunately, Terrence has escaped from prison, and you are first on his list of things to do… IN!

By giving animals rights, this kind of situation is to be expected. So, given all of this information, would you still give a mouse a cookie?


I wrote all of this for my Intro to Ethics class. We have readings assigned every day and we have to write at least a page about what we read. The page is called a ticket, and if I don't have a ticket I can't be in class that day. This particular reading was about how silly it was to give animals rights. So I decided to be funny with it.

Also, at the end of every ticket we have to ask a question that pertains to the reading, which is why it's there at the end there.