Mouse Murder

I have killed before.

Death by septic tank, by scalpel, by electrocution, by acid and occasionally by wiper.

Once, the husband brought home ten little fish. These weren't fancy fish . These were common as muck, gutter snipe fishes with a penchant for gang warfare.

Some kid had been selling them in transparent plastic bags at the intersection near our house and the mister purchased a couple of bags , five fishes to a bag ; mostly to be rid of him.

Im not sure what ancient enmity was at play here but the fishes of bag 1 went apeshit when I liberated the citizens of bag 2 into their playground.

The two warring factions , first devoured each other in a genocidal frenzy and then when their numbers were decimated beyond recognition; the remaining three fishes proceeded to procreate with astonishing rapidity.

Till the entire bedroom was awash with the smell of fishy fecundity.

The more I fed them. The further they multiplied. First five, then seven, then ten. Until eventually there were at least two dozen fish in that fish bowl.

I felt outnumbered in my own room and mind you these weren't pretty fish. Not remotely. They were still violent. They were still ugly.

The fish bowl was a teeming maelstrom of fingerlength blackish grey malevolence.

Beady, megalomaniac eyes peered out from every angle. It was quite frankly, unnerving.

Cannibalism. Genocide. Selective repopulation. Eugenics ?

The philosophical underpinnings of the flawed ecosystem I had unknowingly nurtured in my bedroom, were glaringly at odds with my personal beliefs.

Reforms were called for at a macro level.

My fishbowl needed an exorcism.

Playing it safe. I took the entire bowl and upended its contents into the toilet .

Flushing furiously, hoping they would find a more worthwhile existence in that great septic tank in the sky .

Off course , karma is a bitch and that toilet ended up clogged .

I emptied three bottles of acid down the commode and offered up a prayer for the souls of the departed.

Then there were those casual everyday death sentences delivered via fly swatter.

Where I cavalierly anointed myself judge, jury and executioner.

Like some crazed medieval despot. I pronounced and delivered immediate judgement at the slightest of transgressions.

Shit on my food. Off with your head.

Buzz around me will you? DIE.

I regret these , I do.

There were the classroom dissections featuring an array of small bodies chloroformed and pinned to a dissecting tray.

Varicolored guts and bodily juices spilling out at the touch of a scalpel.

There was no guilt. This was for science.

Buckets and buckets of mosquito repellent, lulling drunken armies of mosquitoes to the lethal embrace of an insect electrocutor.

They would fly , ever hopeful towards the beckoning blue light only to find themselves cremated on the polycarbonate rods of old sparky.

Some smaller bugs would simply explode on coming into contact with the electric Rods. Immediate incineration.

Every morning without fail, I would grimly sweep up the detritus of their corpses.Yellow rubber gloves and red dustpan strangely festive against the backdrop of the insect mortuary .

There was no pleasure in this exercise.

But in a dog eat dog world, it's either kill or be killed.

The fizzing, writhing, salt laden deaths of the slugs and snails which would crawl out of our garden ; were a simultaneously riveting and repulsive spectacle during the monsoon.

It was a dirty job, but it had to be done and I had the stomach for it at the time.

On occasion I would encounter cockroaches and although I bore them no personal grudge.

I happen to know that those scurrying little legs are not their only means of locomotion.

Cockroaches, can to their ultimate detriment, fly.

They are small and I am quite large in comparison.

I know my fear is untenable .

Nevertheless, every cockroach I have ever met has been squished to a white pulp with whatever weapon is in my proximity .

Fear makes monsters of us all.

So , you see. I'm not unfamiliar with death.

I'm not really the queasy sort.

But.

Yesterday, the husband said he saw a mouse.

Although. I too had seen a mouse.

I told him it was probably just an unusually large insect .

I can live with a mouse.

Quite honestly, I've lived with worse.

But the husband was adamant.

It WAS a mouse and he HAD seen it and he refused to share space with it.

So I humored him. Because that's what you do with husbands.

I figured the mouse would be canny enough to take care of itself .

It had survived thus far. It would outlive the husbands temporary bloodlust.

But that stupid, suicidal mouse decided to pirouette beneath the husbands dining chair at breakfast time.

With his resolve newly strengthened.The husband returned home from work with reinforcements .

He was a man on a mission.

He lined up his array of weaponry.

Bug spray, more bug spray and not one but three mouse traps.

Having diligently tracked the mouse to its home beneath the refrigerator. He placed a slice of toast on a trap.

Our resident rodent was not the fizziest can in the six pack.

Within a matter of minutes , lt peered out. Saw the toast , siren-like in its soggy lumpen allure and scampered eagerly forward.

I picked up a broom and tried to brush it back under the fridge.

But undettered, he dodged me and landed feet first on the traps sticky surface.

I had overestimated it's street smarts.

It was stuck but remained fixated on the prize , still tantalizingly out of reach at the far end of the trap.

I had bet on the wrong rodent.

My mouse was just plain stupid.

I watched it as it struggled to move, eventually it fell on its side, white underbelly exposed.

And that's when the penny dropped.

Recognition dawned in its dim little eyes but not yet resignation.

Little legs pawed the air desperately in an attempt to get upright.

It struggled frantically whilst squeaking for help. There was none to be had.

I wondered what to do.

I nudged the body with my broom in an effort to pry it loose. But only succeeded in sticking it further to the trap.

More pathetic mousy squeaks. More futile struggles.

I came back an hour later, hoping it had somehow worked it's way free.

It had given up. Resigned to its fate.

Motionless, fully stuck ,every now and then it would squeak reproachfully at the toast which had betrayed him.

Leaving it there wasn't an option.

I could just toss the trap in the bin outside . Mouse and all.

It would slowly starve or be eaten by predators.

An idea took shape.

Reluctantly and with a heavy heart. I slammed the trap shut and stamped on it just once.

Picturing the small mouse skull shattering . The life going out of its limbs.

There was one muted squeak. Then silence.

Given the alternatives.

It was clean, it was a quick death.

I still felt like a murderer.

A monster.

There is blood on my hands.

Was she a mouse mama who had left her babies at home to find food for them?

Was he an intrepid solo adventurer on a reconnaissance mission?

Maybe she was a young lady mouse.

Maybe she wasn't stupid.

Perhaps I should post humously give her the benefit of the doubt.

Female mice have after all been documented to suffer from PMS like symptoms.

Maybe it was that time of month. Ten days of prozac curtail those, even in lady mice.

Maybe I should have baited her with Prozac instead of bread .

It's too late for regrets. Besides, I don't know that I could identify mouse genitalia even if I saw them.

Maybe there is a mouse heaven, perhaps it went there. Life on earth is after all short and fleeting and ultimately disappointing.

There is no purpose to this story.

There was a mouse and it is now dead.

It deserves to be remembered.