So I had started to write about just what exactly I do around here on a regular basis when something came up this morning. I was starting to work on laundry when one of our little mouse friends decided to scoot past me along the wall. We've been trying to solve this mouse problem for a while now. We bought poison a few weeks ago and found one dead mouse in our laundry room a few days later, but holes were still getting punched in our food bags (Dry spaghetti? Oats? Seriously, what is this mouse thinking?). So we figured out that the mice were using the hole in the wall where the sink plumbing runs in order to get into and out of the house. Ok, so we put more poison down there. Well, we hadn't really seen much of the mice until today.So, obviously the goal is to get rid of the mice. I don't know a whole lot about mice, but I don't really want to chance one biting me so "getting rid of," in this case, means killing, and probably killing pretty brutally. So I follow it along the wall and it hides behind our leftover roll of barbed wire. I move that and he hides behind of the legs of the laundry sink, and he's obviously trying to get to his hole in the wall. So I redirect him back to the other wall where he hides behind a broom. Fortunately, we have about a foot-long block of wood sitting in the laundry room, so I pick that up, move the broom and when he starts to scurry, take a whack!
Somehow I connected so he's kind of hobbling toward the back door to get outside, so I have to hit him again, because now it's a matter of putting him out of his misery. So I whack him again, doing my best to hit him on the head so it's quick, but he's still moving around. I pushed him outside in the back of the house and gave him the third hit that ended his day...and life.
After we found the first dead mouse, it was a sense of accomplishment. The mouse was causing problems, we decided to address the problem and we got rid of the problem. It was easy because it was like it was the mouse's fault for eating the poison. It was indirect. This time, it was very direct. I not only watched the mouse die. I participated in it's death. Hell, I was the main antagonist.
Some of you may think, Big deal. Dead mouse. Well my mind doesn't operate that way when I kill something. I immediately felt like crap. I'm thinking, all this mouse is doing is living it's life, causing me the minor problem of poking holes in food bags, and here comes the big human with the stick to put an end to things.
This is the problem I have with war. Yeah, I'm taking it there. I'm not gonna sit here and say I have the solution to ending international (or even intranational) conflict without using force, but war to me is an ugly thing. To me, sending troops off to war is like putting poison out for mice. Sooner or later, something's gonna end up dead. It's easy to put the poison out, because it detaches you from the situation. You don't have to do anything, and the outcome just happens. That's how it is for national leaders. Presidents, dictators, whoever. They send troops off to fight their fights and don't have to see the consequences directly. I'd like to see how a national leader would react if, instead of the enemy killing their troops, the troops were released home to the leader so that he or she him- or herself would have to end that soldier's life. How would that change the game?
So, of course, about ten minutes later another mouse scurries by me while I'm doing laundry. I'm still literally upset about having killed what I have to assume is this new mouse's brother or sister, so there's no way I'm killing this one. But I'm also not just gonna let it keep eating into our food bags. This mouse is moving pretty slow, so I'm figuring I can catch him. He gets into a corner and apparently is trying to act like I don't see him, so I grab one of the old rice sacks we have in the laundry room, throw it over him and pick him up, as he squeals for his life :(. I chuck him into the bucket we use for getting extra water from the pozo and let him sit, trying to figure out the best solution for getting rid of him.
Well, about an hour later, he's laying in the bucket panza arriba (belly-up). Apparently, he got into the poison we had set out. That would also explain why a mouse was moving slow enough that I was able to grab it.
Three dead mice. Two indirect and one direct kill. On some level, I know it's kind of silly to get upset about it. How many mice get killed in a day by how many people? I guess it's the bigger picture of respect for creation and my wondering about what makes one species superior to another that makes me think about this more than you might think about it. I just hope there's no more mice to have to make a decision about...
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