*Warning: This may not be suitable for small children, animal rights pansies, or anyone afraid of physical and/or emotional carnage.
Lately, there's been a lot of crying in my house.
I was at a friend's house watching the game the other night when my phone rang. It was Phil, sounding a bit spooked. He had seen a ghost. A little brown furry ghost that disappeared behind the fridge. We've been clean for months, but now it looked as though the cold weather had brought a holiday visitor.
When I got home, Phil had barricaded the kitchen so there were only a couple of places to hide: behind the fridge and behind the stove.
I gave the fridge a shove and he bolted out from behind it, almost running into my foot before busting a U-turn and disappearing behind the fridge again. Phil secured the doorway while I made one more shove of the fridge. Out shot our buck-toothed guest, spinning his little legs on the linoleum, trying desperately to find the traction that would propel him out of the danger of daylight.
Thump. He was surprised to find a barricade over his favorite escape route. As he paced its length hoping in vain for an opening, I seized the moment and, after a couple of misses, landed a size 11 shoe square on his rear end. With this, he began the most awful crying you can imagine. It was not cute; it was more blood-curdling, and I felt awful.
Unfortunately, we hadn't planned for this moment, so here I was stuck with a screeching rat under my toe, who was gradually wriggling himself free, and I had no weapon with which to finish him off. There was a frying pan in reach, but I couldn't imagine anyone would be able to use it again after it pummelled a rat. Phil and I, unable to leave our stations, yelled for help. It appeared in the form of Matt's 7-Iron.
You would be surprised how hard it is to finish off a dying animal. I was surprised at the resistance I felt to giving that final blow. It's like the resistance I feel before cliff-diving. It's fear of the finality of your move.
But our adolescent rodent friend would not shut up and so I clenched my teeth and with one chip shot to the back of his neck, he was silenced. My heart was racing. But at least he wasn't crying any longer.
That night, I dreamt I was swimming in the ocean, trying to help a sperm whale that was crying. This is no coincidence.
Last night I returned to the house after the game and found a woman standing in the hall. She was an old girlfriend of one of my roommates and apparently had dropped by unannounced. A bit later she was gone, and then we heard a man crying from behind the house. This was not sniffling. It was howling, and it went on for a good 15 minutes, standing in the cold rain in our dark backyard. It was the worst crying I had heard since Tuesday, but this time I couldn't end the misery. I exchanged a knowing glance with my roommate as we listened to the wails.
"That's rough."
"Yes it is."
He'll be alright, but I can't say the same for our rodent friend.
Posted by aokie at December 22, 2004 11:02 AMonce, i decided to kill a largish mouse that was infesting the kitchen of a habitat project I was on. and i was sorry that i even began the process and felt a little sickened by it all, like ransom in c.s. lewis' book perelandra when he decides to finish off a wounded frog. i am not an "animal rights pansy," but still think that my reaction instructs me, though it is hard to reconcile biologically, that we weren't meant originally to kill things. yeah, and emotional carnage, that might be even harder to bear.
Posted by: Neil E. Das at December 23, 2004 02:32 PMI know what you mean when you say you felt resistance to delivering the death blow. At one point I had to behead a chicken after a friend of mine had already tried, but not tried hard enough, if you know what I mean. Even though I knew that killing it would stop the pain it was in, it was still hard going to actually do it.
Posted by: gosey at December 23, 2004 03:35 PMneil, gosey: my thoughts exactly. it's funny because in my head, i kill harmful vermin with sure, swift strokes, not hesitation.
Posted by: abe at December 23, 2004 05:36 PMi read these last two entries late last night and then dreamt of walking in the rain with people i know, who were crying. all i could think was that i needed to soak up their tears, so i kept trying to hug them and sponge off (literally, with a scotch-brite sponge) their faces at the same time.
i'm glad it was hard to kill the rat. it should be.
Posted by: amy at December 24, 2004 11:46 AM