The Mouse That Stuttered

Two blind mice and one that stuttered

Chased around the kitchen by an old lady with a carving knife

The stutterer saw the danger, but couldn't squeak out an intelligible warning to his blind companions

Two missing tails and a broken trio later, and what might we know:

Only that,

In a World of Angry Farmer's Wives with sharp knives, It's better to be a stuttering mouse than a blind one,

- and -

If you are a blind criminal mouse, don't choose a stutterer as your lookout ...

Well, OK, but what would a stuttering mouse sound like?

That happens to be a principal problem for researchers who have bred mice to stutter, according to an article in The Economist ('Speech Therapy', Jan 26, 2011).

It seems that scientists have discovered what they presume to be a genetic basis for stuttering. To test that theory, they have spliced the suspect gene into mouse DNA. Trouble is, no one knows what a stuttering mouse sounds like. The researchers, though, are sure they can use modern speech recognition software to work out the problem.

If so, there will be new hope for murine stutterers everywhere (and the blind mice who befriend them). Oh, and people who stutter may find some relief too.