"LIFE'S TOO SHORT TO EAT BAD NUTS"

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Perching here and gathering my thoughts ...

A tribute to a brave little mouse

22 December 2003 ~ 23:27

On Friday I had a traumatic, heart-wrenching experience.

I was coming back from lunch, walking around a private communal garden in a square, when I spotted a little furry creature lying on the pathway. I moved in for a closer inspection.

I picked up the creature and discovered that it was a sick baby mouse, in very bad shape indeed. The fact that he had even let me pick him up told me this much, but he was barely moving, and around his behind were signs of green faeces. I knew then that he had been poisoned.

For a moment I panicked, then I suddenly gathered my brain together, and holding him carefully, hurried onto the main road and quickly flagged down a black cab. I told the driver to take me to the Blue Cross animal centre near Victoria, only a short journey away. The Blue Cross is an animal charity providing treatment to pets whose owners are on limited incomes. I actually donate to this charity through my salary every month. Throughout the drive I was gently stoking the mouse with my index finger. He was scarcely breathing and only occasionally moving, like he was trying to get comfortable.

I rushed the mouse into the animal centre and told them what had happened. They told me that he had almost certainly been poisoned with Wafarin and was bleeding internally. There was nothing to do but put him to sleep. I was upset, needless to say. I had been harbouring some vague hope that maybe he hadn�t eaten too much of the poison and they could give him something to purge it through his system (I knew that mice, like rats, cannot vomit). I would have taken him home to live with us, determined he should not be hurt again. I was also concerned about how a tiny baby mouse could be put to sleep. Gas would feel like suffocating they said, so it would be a needle. But a needle in such a tiny body?

As I was thinking about it, he took his last breath and died. It was then that the grief welled up inside me and I began to cry uncontrollably. A tiny life snuffed out because some bastard had deliberately poisoned a baby mouse whose only crime was to want to eat.

I cannot believe that in the 21st century, no one can come up with a bait that will render mice and rats infertile, without otherwise harming them. It must surely be possible. Or else could these heartless monsters not have used a humane trap, such as those my animal-loving in-laws use? As far as I can see, killing �pests� is not much of a solution really, when you consider what prolific breeders they are. Finding the access point and blocking it off would seem to be a more logical answer.

I rang my office and told them I would be taking the afternoon off. I was in no state to return. I went home and straight to bed, devastated and having lost all faith in humankind that could inflict such a cruel death on so tiny and innocent a creature. My mouse will be laid to rest with all our rats that have passed away, in my mum�s garden. He is surely mourned as much as they.


Stored nuts | Future acorns


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