I'm sitting at the kitchen table in my Harlem apartment, facing straight ahead, out the dirty window, listening to the squeals and screams of the struggling mouse, stuck to the sticky mouse-trapping-pad we placed underneath the oven. It has already captured one mouse so far, and I should be thinking: wow, how great! This sticky pad stuff really works! This contraption is catching all those evil, dirty, scheming, little mice that have been pooping on our counters and running around the apartment at night--gross! how dare they!--they must be annihilated!...right?
I'm sitting at the kitchen table in my Harlem apartment, facing straight ahead, out the dirty window, tears streaming down my face. Trying not to hear the squealing and screaming mouse, slowly dying on the poison-infused sticky pad behind me. Maybe if I continue to stare out this window I'll forget that it is there; maybe if I turn my music up a bit louder I won't hear the squeals, which I realize are now diminishing to faint yelps; as if he's calling to me! As if he knows that death is a soft spot for me now, and that even thinking about another creature losing the breath of life, makes me want to double over in sorrow. My tears are growing into a fit of crying.
I now hear only soft screams from the mouse; as if he is beginning to realize that this is a battle he will lose. As if he is taking these last moments to review his mouse-life: his mouse-children, his mouse-wife. Must I sit hear and endure this? If I change rooms, he will still be here, stuck to the sticky, mouse-trapping-pad. Any attempt to remove him from the sticky, mouse-trapping-pad would be futile...nor would I want to attempt an interference with death. My crying has turned to weeping.
Now all I hear is panting--tiny inhalations and tiny exhalations from his tiny, fragile lungs ..then silence. I turn off my music. I stop crying, and I turn around from the window.
