Failings in Growing Up

I was recently presented with a thorough and true lose-lose situation.  And after assessing all my horrible options, I found a third, more cowardly option than the original two loses.  

The house I share with three roommates, the first house-house, not apartment, I've lived in since the house I grew up in, has mouse problems.  Mice problems.  After mouse motels and haunta virus hotels, we've graduated up to the quick and dirty; the traps in Tom and Jerry cartoons that only cat paws ever get caught in.  And for a while, I was the only one who would set them off with my pink slippered feet.  

But my roommates have stalked the mice and have placed them more strategically.  And the mice have gotten bolder.  And these traps are dirty, but they are not quick.  Not as quick as the mice.  So the mice don't die, they only get stuck.  And then they struggle and sweat to get free until I come along to find them.  At least this one.  The poor little one I found the other morning.  

When I was 10ish and my sister was 14ish I remember her coming home from a hard day at the restaurant where she worked.  Someone had caught and killed a mouse--a mother mouse.  So my sister and the other bussers and prep cooks had to kill the naked blind babies screaming for their mother.  They did the right thing.  They where all somber and upset about it, but they found a board, laid it over the baby mice, and one of the stronger (emotionally) bussers stomped down on it.  

When I was four my family went to Disneyland and I hardly remember any part of it.  No rides, no lines, not even Mickey.  But I do remember Cinderella.  I remember she shook my hand and I was in heaven.  Cinderella who befriended birds and dogs and horses and mice, the kindest soul in all of Walt Disney's imaginings, shook my hand.  

As I snuck around the mouse's back I didn't believe he'd been caught.  It looked like he was inspecting the trap.  But he would have had to hear me yell at him, "What the hell are you doing here?" and he hadn't flitted away all quick and light like I know an unstuck mouse can.  Keeping my distance, I tip-toed around him.  Seeing the trap had snapped, but still confused about how it killed him I leaned in closer.  That's when I saw the sweaty fur on the back of his neck.  Slowly and tragically, his little head pivoted toward me and his blind little eyes looked right into mine.  Fuck!  Why are vermin so heartbreakingly adorable??   

I apologized profusely to him as I jumped back and started sweating myself.  I simultaneously remembered my sister's work story from 13 years ago and Cinderella from nearly 20 years ago.  The adult I want to be should have put the struggling creature out of its agony.  The adult I wanted to be as a little girl should have set the mouse free and made it a little outfit and given it any chance I could.  

I had boards a few steps away.  But I couldn't bring myself to lay the board on top of him.  I know I am guilty of personifying pets and wild animals, but I swear his eyes asked me to help him, even if that meant kill him.  Next to the boards was a small terra cotta pot.  I grabbed it and turned it upside down over top of him.  And left.  I went to a friend's house and told her how I'd failed my adult self and my little girl self.  We talked about ants and other house pests like housewives talking about laundry techniques, not like grown up little girls with existential meltdowns.  Then we ate dinner and I pretended to forget about it.  

The next morning, using a shovel and a hoe like impossibly large chopsticks, I again stammered "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry, little guy" as I lay him to rest in the trash can and ran back inside to wash my hands like the disease-fearing adult I've become and cry like the pathetic little girl I still am.