Today I say a tearful prayer to a tiny mouse caught in two kill traps:  leg in one, broken neck in the other; nearby another mouse in a no-kill trap.  The safe mouse I released some distance from the house, across two streams of water, where there is much high grass.  The other mouse I assumed dead having seen it, still and silent, in the two traps, the night before.  Opening the cabinet where the death took place, neither trap was visible.  Clearly, it had not been dead when I first saw it and had dragged the two traps behind a wash tub during the night; all that time dying.  Removing the wash tub, I saw a tiny, tiny foot moving; still alive, trapped, in pain.  I released the foot from the first trap; it slowly pulled its leg toward its body.  As I picked up the remaining trap, the little thing cried out in pain, its neck broken, its eyes squeezed shut in a grimace.  I released it from the trap into my gloved hand.  It twisted to find release from the pain and from the giant holding it.  As I carried the tiny dying thing outside, I stroked it and spoke to it quietly; foolishly thinking I could comfort it.  Its matchstick leg was skinned to the bone, its head and neck twisted.  I laid it in the grass next to the truck of a tree.  I am so sorry for its pain and suffering.  I left it there to die in peace.

I’m not afraid of mice, although they can startled me; they don’t repulse or disgust me, although their habits, in my house, may inconvenience and frustrate me.  They are tiny, soft little creatures trying to live and, unfortunately, are at the bottom of the food chain, fodder for many.

I don’t want them in my house to make messes I have to clean up but I don’t want them dead and I don’t want to see their dying.

“If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” – St. Francis of Assisi