Mice
In the darkness of winter the days and hours all blended together. I got to work after the sun set, and always proceeded to first make a new pot of coffee. On one particularly cold night, as I threw away the old coffee grounds, the dishwasher said to me:
“Did you see what was in there?”
“What?” I asked.
He gestured to the trash with a nod of his head. I peered in. There, laying on top of the garbage, was a mousetrap. It wasn’t a good old-fashioned wood spring trap, but one of those sticky ones that traps its victims like flies in a spiderweb. There was a mouse stuck to it. It was still alive. Its little brown body twitched to the cadence of its heartbeat, and its beady black eyes darted around rapidly. It lurched left and right in a desperate attempt to break free, but to no avail.
“We should kill it.” I said.
The dishwasher shrugged. “It’s just a mouse.”
Just a mouse. A mouse in a place where food was served; certainly a place no mouse should be. Besides, where there is one, there are many. Except this one kept looking at me, and wriggling about. I got a paper towel, and draped it over it. Just a mouse.
But I kept forgetting what people ordered. I messed up two drinks, and sent a beef burrito when they had ordered chicken. I couldn’t stop thinking about that mouse getting buried alive underneath all those half-eaten meals that we were throwing away. Chicken, they’d said.
Not beef. Not mouse.
I wanted to kill it…but I didn’t want to have to be the one to do it. The thought made me anxious. I could just as easily forget about it, let it be buried in the trash and put in the dumpster, where it would either freeze or starve in a couple of hours. Or maybe days. I could leave it to die, or I could kill it. I could assume responsibility, or ignore it. I was having problems smiling at the customers, and my tips were suffering.
As the night wore on, the bus boy went to change the trash. I watched him bag it up and take it outside. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. There was something aching in my chest that compelled me to walk away from what I was doing. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a plastic glove from the dishwasher station, and slipped it on. I opened the back door and was met by a cold breeze of air.
The trash bag was next to the dumpster. I dug through it with numb fingers. I held my breath, trying not to think about what I was doing. My fingers touched something sticky. I pulled the trap out as it hung from the glove, and set it on the ground amidst the cigarette butts that littered the sparkling snow. The mouse was squeaking. I stared at it, my heart racing, trying to comprehend what I was doing. I felt like I owed something to the mouse. I felt like, after having spent the entirety of its existence scurrying about for food and water, that this is how it would die.
I brought my foot down on top of it. There was a sickening crunch, and the squeaking stopped. I tried to conjure up some profound emotion at what I had done, but all I felt was relief. I picked it up, dropped it back in the trash, and hurried inside where it was warm.
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Willow Groskreutz is pursuing an Associates of Arts with a concentration in English. Willow is pursuing a career in writing.