THE DEBATE RAGES OVER
END-OF-LIFE QUESTIONS
Journal of Healing – July 12, 2006
By Mary Koch

            We’ve been discussing end-of-life issues. Mercy killing vs. natural causes. That kind of thing.

            The subject probably wouldn’t come up as much as it does if we didn’t live by the river in an aged house that attracts an on-going influx of mice. And so the debate rages. Which is more humane? To dispose of unwanted rodent squatters by instantaneously breaking their backs in the jaws of a sprung trap? Or do we entice them into a “live” trap and gently set them free in some field, preferably a long ways away, where they’ll be eaten alive by a hawk or snake?

            I don’t qualify to participate in the debate. I’ll have nothing to do with a mouse trap, living or dead. I have spent my entire adult life trying to deny the existence of mice, especially in my habitat. If forced to address the issue, I hide little boxes of poison in deep, dark corners where I can ignore them and neither domestic pets nor children can reach them.

            I am told the poison makes the mouse thirsty, causing it to leave your house in search of water. That’s the theory. In reality, the mouse poops copiously all around the by-now empty box of poison. Then it dies somewhere in your walls, creating a lingering smell, something like rotting gym shoes perched atop a dirty diaper pail.

            It’s not a successful strategy, but I stick with it because I at least never have to look the mouse in the eye.

*     *     *

            THE DEAD-trap vs. live-trap debate has been carried on by two of my husband’s caregivers, whose names will not be mentioned here in hopes that neither will resign. The live-trap advocate is a woman of tender heart who, upon spotting any kind of critter in the house, carefully escorts it back to its natural environment. She has painstakingly reintroduced not only mice but bats and spiders to the wilds of our back yard.

            I watched one morning as Tender Heart painstakingly used the edge of a newspaper to ease a wayward spider across the backdoor threshold onto the wheelchair ramp. Another bystander, misunderstanding the philosophy, spotted the spider making its way across the ramp and helpfully stomped on it.

            Tender Heart sighed with resignation. It’s a cold, cruel world.

            “She’d never make it on a farm,” says the dead-trap advocate, who was, in fact, raised on an Iowa farm.

*     *     *

I KNEW Farm Guy had been trapping mice in the ceiling above our laundry room and throwing the carcasses into the river. I’d forgotten to warn him against boasting of his catch within earshot of Tender Heart.

            Sure enough, he proudly announced to her, “Got four mice last night!”

            She gasped. When she began to argue for a more humane approach, he protested, “I was humane! I fed ‘em to the fish.”

            She wasn’t buying it. She bemoaned the insensitivity of mouse killers to my husband. Being a man of few words, John is a patient listener, but this time he apparently didn’t provide the empathy she sought.

            From two rooms away, I heard Tender Heart – usually a soft-spoken woman – wail, “Johhnnn!”

            “What’s going on?” I asked. It seems John decided to weigh in on the debate by announcing his preferred method of mouse dispatch. It’s a word that would have made his speech therapist proud. John’s “p” is clear, his “f” distinct, and the “k” sound is beginning to come around.

            But to be sure he was understood, he spelled it out:

            P-I-T-C-H-F-O-R-K.

            Farm Guys – 2; Tender Heart – 1.

© Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2006

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