The Story of My [Former] Mouse Friends

The other day, my mom found two dead mice and one live mouse in a vase under the sink at my parents' house (incedentally my house too right now). She alerted my dad, who took the vase out from under the sink only to find that the live mouse was actually eating his dead mouse companions. They had starved to death, and he was eating them as a last resort to survival.

My dad's first inclination was to let the live mouse out into the forest in our "backyard" – I mean, heck, the poor lil guy had already been through enough, right? No. My mom insisted that my dad fill the vase with water and drown the live mouse. So he did. And the lil rascal swam around and around in the vase of death, until there was no more swimming left in him. He let go of the little sliver of life he had clung to, even while he was forced to eat his lil mouse friends.

That's my story for the day. I threw a fit when I found out about it. But my mom insisted that a watery death is not a bad way to die, that the mouse was busy thinking about swimming and had no time to think about dying. Oh yeah... if he wasn't thinking about dying then why did he resort to eating his lil buddies? And why did he swim until he could no more? And not to mention, my mom is freaked out of a watery death. The very idea terrifies her.

So I said to my mom, "If a watery death is a better way to die, then why does the exterminator use poison to kill mice and other critters?" Her response: "Because the exterminator is a busy man, and he doesn't have time to fill up a bunch of little containers with water."