A few weeks ago, leaving the cottage, Mr. Jazz had one last look at the moustraps to be sure none have been caught. Unfortunately field mice get in all the time and there's no stopping them, so we have to take 'em out as a friend says. Can't use living traps as they would die of thirst/starvation during the week while we're not there. So we use the regular snap traps - which almost always catch them on the neck and do the job. I wish i didn't have to do it, but we'd be overrun otherwise...
There was an unfortunate little guy (girl?) in one of the traps. All of a sudden, a yell. "Christ, he's alive!" I go to where the trap is.
"Look he's alive!"
"Well, kill him", I say, "He's hurting"
"But he's alive! I can't"
I don't point out that if he weren't alive he wouldn't have to be killed.... So I take the gardening gloves and break the poor thing's neck, put it out of its pain and misery. Mr. Jazz looks at me in awe.
"Keep on my good side", I tell him.
It wrenches my heart every time. I feel evil each time there's a mouse in the traps. I hope against hope all winter that there will be none. But there always are. And mice scurrying in the walls and wandering all over the house having babies are not an option for me. And Mr. Jazz has too tender a heart.
Life in the woods. Sometimes I hate it.
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