What should happen to the mouse in the cage on my balcony?
- Give it a headstart and let Dog write another poem of devastation with its blood!
- Deliver it to a land of milk, honey and peanut butter sandwiches, with no cats.
0 voters
Came home last night to find that my flatmate had caught a mouse. There it was, a little cute grey thing clinging to the walls of its little cage.
Dog was a bit peturbed, never having come across anything like this before. He ignores frogs and chases flies, but little furry things in cages are a new experience.
Eventually he got his courage up and pressed his nose up against the cage. I would have thought the mouse would scuttle to the far corner of the cage, but it hung on in there, peered up Dog’s nostril, and then bit his nose. That’s what it looked like anyway. So they played for a bit while me and flatmate discussed the future.
Flatmate didn’t want to keep the mouse as a pet, and was ‘scared’ to release the mouse outside. So it fell to me to do it, an activity which coincided with Dog’s evening constitutional.
OK, OK, I should have restrained the dog until Mr Mouse had made his getaway. But I was curious to see how he would react to a mouse on the loose. I expected that he would sniff, snort, not know what to do, and generally not get his shit together fast enough to prevent an escape. And I let him wander off a bit before opening the door of the cage. I thought I was giving the mouse a fair chance, but in retrospect this was rather a cavalier gamble - especially from the perspective of the mouse. The poor bugger didn’t stand a chance.
He tried. He ran like crazy for safety, but was intercepted by Dog, who was sprinting flat out and didn’t even slow down to snatch him from the ground. Two brief squeaks and it was basically all over. I felt guilty looking at the broken bundle of fur twitching feebly in a pool of its own blood, and was glad that another shake in the jaws of death put an end to it’s suffering.
Can’t blame Dog for being an instrument of death. He might not be genetically programmed to deal with cages, but fast moving furry things obviously press some button in his instinctive control system that bypasses his thinking circuits. Wish I could be as guilt-free. I feel like a murderer.
Opinions on a postcard, or below, please.
Also, woke up this morning and there was another mouse in the cage and Dog was very excited. We’ve moved him out to the balcony for the time being, but his fate is as yet undetermined. Please use the poll above to decide whether my balcony is death row or just one chapter in a varied life that includes going to live outside.
Thank you.
Sorry, missed that.