Anastasia Lukomskaya

 
 

I have a lot of mice at my country house, but catching them with a clay and poisoning them is too much unhuman. Every evening I put a safe mousetrap on the terrace and in the morning set them free on the field far away from home. This daily ritual allowed me to learn more about the nature of fear.

 

In the mousetrap the mice begin to gnaw the grate, trying to get out. Although the bars are iron, several generations of prisoners managed to grind off some of them with their teeth, so that a little mouse is quite capable of squeezing through and breaking free. After a sleepless nigh the most of rodents decide that it is impossible to get out. And even when I take them to the field and open the door, some of them stay in the cage for a long time and don't try to run. I keep the stopwatch. Some of them make a circle around the mousetrap, decide that it is safer inside and climb back in. But why?

 

From the outside it seems: "Stupid mouse. You're free! The door is open. You can get out. Get out!” But is she that stupid? Even people who came into a subjectively hopeless situation, stop trying to change something, if they that their attempts are meaningless. Not everyone is ready to take a step towards freedom, even when the trap door opens itself. Is it possible to blame a little mouse for something if whole countries are subject to learned helplessness?