I called the female mouse XX and the male one XY. I hid them both under my bed so that my Mom would not notice. The little creatures were not the squeaky type which helped them pass unnoticed by my mom. Do animals talk? I wrote on my observation diary. I put the cage on the coffee table and watched the mice move around each other, look at me and look at each other. They must have their own language but humans do not know it. Homosapiens and other animals whether avian or aquatic have almost if not identical vocal apparatuses. Parrots can actually repeat words and even phrases. The parrot is a bird that showed that animals can produce intelligent human words when prompted but cannot use our language to communicate intelligently with us. A human also imitates a monkey or a dog. Hunters imitate bird calls and birds show up. Do they show up because they think a flock of theirs is at that spot or because they are curious about the peculiar noise that sounds like their calls. The hunters , in this case, are in a way similar to the parrot in their attempt to mimic bird calls. I convinced myself that the animals use some kind of set of communicative methods that fit the definition of a language.
I felt my heart pounding and heard a squeak. I lifted my eyes to see both mice strangely looking at me. At that very moment, Mom knocked at door of my room. “ did I hear a squeak?” she yelled.
“ did you buy a mouse again? I strictly ..”
“ I have no mice here,” I interrupted.
“ Go to bed, honey,” She yelled again.
My mom thinks that she had to yell to be heard when my door is closed.
“ Yes, Mom. I am going to bed,” I replied nonchalantly.
I hid my mice, who now crouched on themselves in the cage, under the bed. I turned the lights off and wondered how I was going to hide the mice from my mom. Sooner or later she will find out, I worried. I decided to hide them outside in the shrub in the neighbor’s backyard each morning and sneak them back into the apartment after I come from school. I read my prayers aloud and made sure my mom heard them. I felt my heart pounding fast again and heard the mouse squeaking: a noise I covered by tossing noisily in my bed. I was still tossing in my bed when I heard the mice squeaking louder and louder. I got out of my bed fast, turned the flash light on and pulled the mice cage from underneath the bed. No sooner had I done so than they got silent and looked at me while standing on two legs as if they had wanted to impress me. I felt my skull tightening. One mouse turned on itself like a ballerina, then dropped in front of the other. It was XY. XX clapped with both hands and made a happy squeak that sounded like a laughter. XY stood on its hind legs and held his tiny head in his tiny little front legs. He issued an intermittent squeak, turned in quick circular motion on its hind legs and dropped on the floor of the cage. As Xy was holding his head and performing his clown dance, I felt the lobes of my skull tightening, my eyes about to pop and I threw myself on the bed abruptly to the franc amusement of XX. “ I am dying ,” I repeated. “ Mom,” I wanted to yell but my voice has gotten weak. My discomfort suddenly cleared. XX and XY became silent and looked at me with their beady eyes. “ they are thinking!” I thought. My heart suddenly went pounding. XX and XY shook their heads left and right while looking at me then leaned on the rails. As they both lifted their front legs towards their heads, I felt my head starting to tighten. I looked at them and held my head in my hands. They both nodded and put down their front legs while standing on their back legs. The excruciating headache, I noticed occurs once they lift their legs towards their heads. They repeated the exercise many times till I made the clear-cut connection between their movements, the squeaking and my headache. It was no longer a simple hazard correlation. It was a fact. We were effectively communicating. Are they using magnetic waves? I know mice use UV light for vision so they must have been using magnetic waves to communicate in addition to the squeaking which is only a vocal expression of a language we do not understand. I felt my heart pounding faster while both XX and XY made happy squeaking and touched their upper chest with their left front legs. They were effectively listening. They were following the thread of my thoughts from point to point. My mice nodded again and jived in their cage then held on abruptly to the rails of their small cage with their head inserted in between the bars. XX and and XY held their hands joined together outside the cage; they were imploring me. They both closed their eyes and I felt mine close against my will. I felt moving as if in a car or a train; I did not open my eyes: “ teleportation, teleportation…” I repeated in awe. “It is happening to me. I am being teleported. “ My eyes opened and I found myself in a lab. I was wearing a lab coat that was nearly brushing against the floor; I was wearing shoe-covers, a mask, gloves and cap. It was cold. There were lots of mice in lots of cages, tube, bottles, cylinders, burners, microscopes, different running machines, computers and all kinds of lab equipement. It got extremely cold. A voice came of nowhere and felt very cold. “Grab a gown, they are in a box in front of you,” said the voice. It was a mouse in a cage who talked. It looked similar to XY but was grey. “You actually talk like us,” I wanted to say but preferred to refrain from any comments. “No, it is not the mouse,” said the mouse. I squinted and rubbed my eyes. I heard laughter. It was coming different cages. “Turn it off,” said a guy in a lab coat who handed me a thick gown. He was wearing goggles on top of a very thick-lense-vision glasses; he covered his head with a cap and a hood, wore a mask and gloves. “Sorry, I did not want to scare you but I have a psoriatic condition and cannot afford to be careless anymore.”
I did not answer. “ no comment, “I said in my head and heard myself echoing out loud. “ the mice do not talk or maybe they do but that is a research run in another experimental science department. Here we are in telecommunication and entertainment.” The mice I had were lab mice, I learned . I bought them via internet from the universal telecom and entertainment labs Arizona. Those labs as I have just been told served all kind of experimentation and were direct partners with NASA. “So tell me about your project!” he incited me to talk since I have not said a word to him. “I think that animals actually talk,” I said. He nodded his head in interest and: “Okay,” he said.
“Physically we are equipped with the same structures that allow speech to happen,” I went on. “They actually vocalize, and some of them such as parrots can repeat actual human words,” I added and became silent to elicit a comment from him. He simply hummed. I understood I had to elaborate more. “ Animals do not talk our languages but have their own languages that allow them to communicate with each other. Unlike us they do not use only verbal and facial expressions and gestures but they use physiological, chemical, magnetic and UV signals to intercommunicate as well. Our genetic composite has certainly some coded differences that set us as different species but we have lots in common with other species. Animals can compensate for the other differences that do not allow them to communicate with us by using the same systems and mechanisms they use to communicate effectively with each other. XY and XX might as well have used the same mechanisms to communicate with me on their own without any embedded telecom chips.”
“ Aren’t you a smart boy?!” He laughed.
“ We map it all,” he added and continued: “ There are physiological pathways of transmission in all living creatures animals included. We are using these pathways for tele-communicative purposes. We used the mice you ordered to communicate with you. As a matter of fact it is me talking to you, I am here, “ said the lab guy in a different voice and looked in the direction of the door where another guy in a lab coat was standing and waiving to both of us. My new communicator took me on a tour around the lab in a golf car. “ It is freezing here,” I hissed through my now chattering teeth. “It must be XY. He is telling us the boy is cold!” said my companion in a female voice. “ Don’t get scared, you will get used to our prime time communication,” laughed the guy. “ So, the mice can communicate.” I added. “ It is complicated,” said the guy. “ Our staff are using your XY to directly pick your ‘vibes,’ and communicate them to us. Early tonight, we used XY to joke with you. We told you our head hurt, we could not stand the cage and that we were about to have a heart attack; our female staff had XX stand on her feet, applaud and ‘laugh.’ Earlier tonight , our guys also told you that your mom was cute and that is when you thought you had an urge to piss. See, the mice cannot actually speak our language but we use highly advanced tech to speak through them

The illustration, Hamster on a wheel, is drawing by Jamila Ouriour