It was an accident

Honestly! I didn’t mean to kill the mouse! It just… happened!

How many times have we heard that on television programs and thought ‘yeah, right’?

We reason it all out: if you hadn’t been drinking and driving; if you’d been paying attention to how frayed the wires were; if you’d controlled your temper and walked away; if you’d not bought the gun in the first place…

But accidents do happen, even to small furry creatures too cute to kill as soon as you see them.

You’ll recall the mouse, filled with bravado crawling around my desk, into and out of a container and later, over my keyboard and then ducked into the computer to hide under the spare fan bracket. I said I would close up the computer to stop it from doing any damage.

I didn’t put the cover on until I’d finished for the day; gave the mouse enough time to scamper off to its home – wherever that might be.

This morning, there was an awful stink and I knew something had died – in particular, a mouse. A couple of years ago, I laid out some poison upstairs and down.

Later that night, a grey mouse came out from behind the television unit upstairs. It glared at me with accusation deep in its small eyes and staggered off. I should have picked it up then, but the guilt… oh, the guilt of murdering the little beast kept me motionless.

The next morning, I found it behind the couch, cold and stiff; I buried it in the front yard and collected the bodies of four mice downstairs. The karma load felt heavy on my shoulders as I disposed of their mortal remains.

I should point out that mice often come into houses for the winter; no matter what I do, I can’t keep them out, and can only do something after they’re inside.

Tragically, the mouse didn’t scamper off to its home and was locked inside the computer; I found it this morning, still under the fan bracket. I have no idea what killed it – too short a time has passed for starvation. Heat maybe? It was on the cold metal of the computer shell. Maybe it was already sick? It gobbled down a peanut I left for it. I don’t know, but it’s dead, and I feel responsible.

I think it was already sick and was looking for a comfortable, safe place to die; chose my computer. I’ll console myself with that.