Nine days ago I was working at the computer one night when I heard a strange scratching in the kitchen. It sounded like a giant mouse running around in a cabinet. When I went to investigate, I realized whatever it was was running around in the small cupboard above the stove. I didn’t dare open the door.

That cabinet had been a rodent residence before, until I got around to buying mouse poison. But knowing this one probably squeezed in through the fan vent made me hope he might depart the same way.

The next morning it was quiet, but I bought some D-Con poison to put in the cabinet anyway, just in case. The morning after that I checked the poison, and the industrial-sized rodent had returned, had eaten most of the cardboard boxes and also what was inside them.

I closed the door and decided to let nature take its course.

But night after night the scratching returned, 8 evenings in a row. This was one resistant mouse! Then yesterday morning I opened the cabinet and shrieked. Lying down, pressed between the cabinet door and my cookbooks, was a BIG something! In a nano-second I slammed the cabinet shut and wondered what it was! Surely it wasn’t a 9” long mouse! Maybe a rat?

I decided not to open the cabinet again, worrying he might fly out at my face and bite me with his poison-drenched teeth. But later when Mary came, we cracked it open to take a peek. He was still lying there but had changed his position.

Not knowing what to do, we did nothing. I rubberband-ed the cabinet closed, and we decided to sleep on it. When we carefully opened the door today, we got our first good look at him. A baby squirrel! I felt awful. Why would a baby squirrel be running around in winter weather?

He had died, but probably died happy. Three boxes of palette-pleasing poison were completely gone. No doubt he’d looked forward to his special end-of-the-day treat every evening.

“Well,” I said, searching for a silver lining, “at least he won’t have to struggle through a cold winter.”

Sometimes I think that same silver lining applies to people, too. God removes someone from this troubled world, taking them to heaven, and we wonder why a life was “cut short.” Could it be he wanted to spare them from a “cold winter?” That’s a question to which we’ll get an answer only in eternity.

I do know in Nate’s case that he’ll never have to struggle with the winter of old age or die in the cold reality of a long, drawn-out illness. Being spared of those is blessing indeed. But even better than that is his new life of “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” (1 Peter 1:8)

It’s already begun!

“Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come.” (Isaiah 57:1)