My day started out so badly that I speculated that it could only get better. It turned out I was right.

I got up at 7:30 a.m. The sun does not rise now until 9 p.m., so it seemed earlier than it was.

I got dressed, and as I often do, I staggered around a bit. I went to open the kitchen cupboard door because we had set two mouse traps on the lower shelf. I jumped backwards in noticing that one of the traps was bouncing around. I then inched forward and took a closer look. The reason for the bouncing was this: the trap wire had not grabbed onto the neck, but rather, on to the mouse’s rear quarters. It was obviously in considerable pain. I scooped

Pete cooking brats at Oxtober fest

mouse and trap onto the stove shovel and momentarily stood, wondering what to do. I knew that if I attempted to release the wire that the mouse would bite me.

With age comes wisdom. I once attempted to free a mouse caught on a sticky trap and was bit.

Pete was still in bed. I yelled up to him that the trap had caught the mouse’s back end and asked him what to do. He told me to kill it with the shovel. I suggested that I drown the mouse, knowing as I spoke that this would be a slow death.

“Hit it with the shovel,” Pete said.

I let loose with a howl of anguish, for I could not do this. I don’t kill animals, and this one was not going to be an exception. But it was in pain.

“You do something,” I yelled.

Pete, stark naked, came downstairs, and went into the kitchen addition. Wham, he hit the mouse with the stove shovel. Then he tossed the mouse outside, refastened the trap, and put it back in cupboard.

I don’t like having to trap or kill mice. But we do have to keep the numbers down, otherwise it will be around here like that movie Willard, except the central characters were then rats. And the central characters in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were snakes.

Maybe it was because it was that early hour, the time between waking and dreams, that the above seemed so surreal. But I suspect that the real reason for my feeling of ambivalence was that I do love all animals, even mice with their beady little eyes.

What if say, the mouse was our size and I was its size? And what if my bottom half got caught in a trap? I would, like that mouse, be terrified.

I have traps now in the chicken roost. I’m closing the sliding door at night until it gets cold and they go up there for much needed warmth. I am doing this because the mice are eating the chicken feed and chicken feed is expensive. I’ve trapped two mice who have died a merciful death.

I suppose that I should think we should all be so lucky.

Next: 297. 10/29/23: The Horse Life: Re: Connecting