Somewhere along my journey to middle-age, I adopted a tenet that all critters are simply here to make a living—just the same as us. As an outcrop of this, I grew soft on killing things. If a grizzly or a mountain lion threatened attack, I wouldn’t hesitate to dispatch them. But I allow for smaller transgressions.
In practical
terms, this means I live-trap mice when they find entry into my house. I understand how mice may vector disease and I
know they are messy, but the same can be said for some of my human friends.
Only
a minute or so before going to bed last night, Desiree saw a mouse scuttling
along the kitchen baseboard. I
immediately set five small live traps close to the range where Desiree saw the
mouse.
At
midnight, on a trip to the kitchen for a drink of water, I discovered two traps
had successfully captured a mouse.
My
habit is to walk or drive captured mice down the road a half-mile or so before
releasing them in the wild. Last night, I
considered leaving them trapped until this morning, but I knew the thought of
them would keep me awake.
I quietly
dressed in my robe and slippers, and then took the mice on a midnight run out
into the country while listening to Bob Dylan and Cage the Elephant.
Letting things live is the more difficult
option.
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