Mouseslaughter (but not murder)

"After all, once you have bought the trap, you are in the mouse killing business." So says my buddy Dave in a recent comment in which he gently chides me for allowing the mouse to perish in such a horrible fashion. Sure I set the trap and unlike accidentally leaving a loaded gun on one's night table (again, big apologies to Harvey the carpet cleaning guy.... so sorry about the leg wound) there was definitely intent to kill the mouse. My right to trap of course is not in question. We all agree that traps don't kill mice, people kill mice.......or do they??? This seemingly small act of callous self-protection has actually been the subject of many great philosophical treatises going all the way back to ancient Greece. Famed german scholar G.W.F. Hegel put forth in his celebrated "Auf der Totung der Mause" (On the Death of Mice) that in setting the trap and departing, man was simply leaving the mouse's future in the hands of fate. This was met with stern criticism and was completely discredited a few years later by Arthur Schopenhauer in an article for Philosophisches Journal: "Hegel, Sie Dumkopf!". (Hegel, you Idiot)

Schopenhauer successfully argued that the mouse, while one of God's creatures, was incapable of free will and acted on instinct alone. He continued: "The mouse could scarcely have avoided the small and tempting piece of cheese just as man cannot avoid relieving himself after several large bratwurst washed down with stout ale! These are biological imperatives. In the face of such urges both man and mouse are rendered powerless." The rift between the two friends was a cause celebre in German academic circles but amends were made after an evening of fabulous make-up sex, cigars, and brandy.

Now we have the historical backround so we can flash forward about a century and a half to a couple of nights ago....my kitchen....11 p.m. Looking at that trapped mouse I was forced to confront certain truths about myself, about views that I hold which are contradictory and seemingly irrational. In favor of capital punishment but against euthanasia? I guess that doesn't make sense at all but standing there in that single moment, that lone pixel on the 52" HDTV screen that is my life (85 years to pay with no interest) I realized that while I could passively kill the mouse via the trap I couldn't bear to put him out of his misery with a simple hammer blow. It's up to me now....either I learn to live in harmony with the invading mice or I learn to hunt and not mind getting a little blood on my hands. The mouse and trap are still in my yard as the hoped for neighbourhood cat clean-up squad never materialized. I guess as a first step towards non-avoidancy I'll go pick up after myself. Back later.....