I KILLED

Call me Rodent Slayer. Ivan the Rodent Slayer. Great White Hunter. CAVE MAN.

I have lived on a farm and way out in the boonies and have had to do things like strangle and skin rabbits, shoot and skin birds, bury mangled dogs, comfort dogs while they were being euthanized, see my mom in the hospital that one time, help at car wrecks, and so forth, so it's not that big a deal.

And yet, I am the kind of guy who, when the girl shrieks, "EEEK! A BUG!," I just about never ever KILL THE BUG, but find a way to put the bug outdoors. Unless it's a scorpion or wasp or other stinging bug. Then I will commit mass murder or serial killing. But to me every wee life has significance, if only to itself, so I only kill in self defense. Thus I will kill roaches and ants. Most spiders are spared by me and assisted out to the yard. I enjoy insects and can tolerate arachnids, and I love reptiles, but detest soft warty amphibians, and soft fast scurrying rodents. I hates meeces to pieces.

I would let the mice live just like I let the squirrels outside live, but the fucking mice want to come INSIDE and eat my porno and old zines, and pee on my precious ancient archival SubGenius tapes. One or two I wouldn't mind but they have those pinkies, and the pinkies grow up and have more pinkies. And every pinkie stinks.

I like cats and dogs fine, but I don't want to abuse one by owning it during my current busy biped-oriented lifestyle. So it's mousetraps. OR STONE HAND AXES.

I finished my "paid" chore (contribution to a book about Jack Chick and his tract empire) so I can tell this.

I knew there was a mouse in the storage room next to my studio because I could faintly smell rodent. That tiny mouse-turd gerbil-cage smell. I already had a trap in the basement, but I was thinking I might put one up here just for yuks.

So. Last night, Princess Wei is on her way up the stairs into my studio when she stops and SCREAMS! For there is a MOUSE! A tiny, TINY gray mouse is sitting in the storage room doorway, just looking at her. Without a by-your-leave. I stalk over there and he starts nonchalantly waddling away back into the storage room. Like a fucking idiot. Like there's NO giant monster about to kill him. I'm looking around for something to CRUSH him with while I have the chance. There's a hammer behind me, but... it's a small one, awfully SHORT, I dunno... but he vanishes anyway, so I'm spared that for the time being.

I comfort my wife, who is like an elephant when it comes to mice, and go fetch the mousetrap from the basement.

But as I'm entering my room again I spy THE DUMBASS'S TAIL STICKING OUT FROM UNDER THE FLAP OF A BIG BOX FULL OF CDs. His cute little gray tail. He THINKS he's hiding under that cardboard flap from that open box. The box is long but shallow and the lid is long and flops all the way down to the floor when opened. And the mouse is under that cardboard like a dumbass, and the hammer is right behind me.

I'm thinking, this sumbitch CAN'T be this stupid, but on the other hand, maybe he is, and that's why I'm a primate and he's a rodent, and this is all fairly normal. And with that I SLAM THE HAMMER PRETTY FUCKING HARD RIGHT ONTO THE SPOT ON THE CARDBOARD UNDER WHICH I FIGURE HIS TEENY SKULL IS!! Following that there is no sound. In terrible suspense I lift up the now smushed cardboard flap with the edge of the hammer, expecting the mouse to come springing out directly into my eyes with his tiny bloody claws and evil chittering fore-teeth and hate-filled eyes, crazed with pain and willing to die if only he can reach behind my glasses to my eyes and infect them first.

But he's GONE!

There is another heavy box full of CDs next to the Death Box of CDs, but not right up against it. I look in the crack between the two and THERE HE IS HUDDLED DOWN THERE. I... KICK THE BOX! -- so that he is crunched in between the two heavy boxes. Then... with MORE HORRIBLE HORROR -- I LOOK! And he is GONE! But I look again under the box flap, and he has somehow spazzed or convulsed himself back to that spot and seems unmarked but DEAD. A DEAD LITTLE INNOCENT SWEET MOUSE, KILLED BY ME. I guess the mousetrap would have been quicker. Maybe. Maybe not. You ever find a crippled rat attached to one of those things? I had to brain a suffering, crazed one with a wrench, that's how I know.

I must admit that it felt perfectly normal to kill a mouse with a hand tool. For all I know it would have felt normal to then pop it into my mouth and eat it. But I don't think so. I don't have that much Yeti in me.

I once helped some Indian friends of mine, that is, Native Americans of the Lakota tribe in South Dakota, slaughter and butcher a calf -- a DEFORMED, CRIPPLED calf -- for a pow wow. They shot the deformed hideous (cheap) calf in the head with a shotgun and then peeled all its skin off and carefully extracted its disgusting puke-inducing gigantic gut-sack. The young guy my age couldn't look. He had seen too many drunk driving car wrecks. But his mom and dad tore into that thing with truly Old School gusto. And Mrs. Black Lance got to the liver, and with much flourish and jolly ceremony ATE A GREAT BIG RAW BLOODY SLICE OF IT. Boy did that gross out her son. Grossed him out a lot more than me, because it wasn't my mom standing there covered in blood eating a still-hot raw liver slice. That sure tickled her.

So, it's all relative. This does NOT make me hungry, but I should probably go eat a peanut butter sandwich anyway for the blood suger thing. But god damn. I sure am glad I can just go to the store and buy a pre-chopped up dead bird, just the meat, no blood hardly, wrapped in celophane. I know how to avoid tainting the meat with the gall bladder and all that, I just hate doing it.

I hope civilization doesn't collapse all around us this year. Having to haul all my computer gear and video dubbing crap around on travoises pulled by dogs would be a stone bummer. I very much value the microwave and those Boca Italian Style fake sausages made from soy beans. Keeps the killing and blood down a couple of notches. Think globular, act loco.

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Original file name: Killing the Mouse - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:44