As you know, I came to Monkey Valley this November to write. And as many writers can verify, it is a law of the universe that just about any mundane chore can seem more important when there’s writing to be done. Monkey Valley provided me with myriad (which literally means 10,000) diversions. Would you like to hear about them?
The first was the most horrible. When I arrived, I discovered that my favourite little furry visitors had been scampering around the house, and the first order of business was to clean up the signs of their presence. Yes, I am talking about mouse turds. 🙁 For some reason, the biggest accumulation of mouse turds was around the live mouse traps. There was also a big mess of ground up blue mouse bait outside the traps. I can only surmise that the mice inside the trap passed bits of the poisoned bait to the mice outside the trap. How terribly sad. I feel like such a beast. Eventually, of course, the mice outside the trap joined the mice inside the trap.
My evil plan is that the bait entices the mice into the trap, and then kills them, hopefully quickly and painlessly. Since they die there, and not in the walls of the house, I don’t have the scary problem of maggots parading across the living room floor, which once happened when an animal died inside the wall. Unfortunately, judging from the half-eaten remains of some of the mice in the traps, the death is not always quick and painless. It can involve being cannabalized by one’s own mates. Or maybe this chewy snacking occurred after the mice were already dead… I hope so, but it is still a terrible thing for the living mice to have to digest. (Pun intended.)
The other benefit of my perfected mice-killing scheme is that the poison from the dead mice does not travel into the chain of life at Monkey Valley, poisoning bugs and birds and other creatures who might encounter the little dead bodies. But as I gathered the little corpses into a big green garbage bag, it occurred to me that the poison will still enter the biosphere at the landfill where the dead mice wind up, thus poisoning bugs and birds at the site of the landfill, rather than at Monkey Valley. The goal of ahimsa is difficult indeed. Perhaps the traditional “dead mouse trap” is better than the “live mouse trap & poison” approach. To be continued…