Subject: I Killed

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Wed, Nov 27, 2002 1:07 PM

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 horses fuck, render aid 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 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: I Killed - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:44