Requiem for a Mouse

I think mice are rather nice;
Their tails are long, their faces small;
They haven't any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn't touch,
and, no one seems to like them much,
but, I think mice are rather nice.
~Rose Fyleman

This is a poem that runs deep in my psyche, mainly because it's one of the two poems that my dad knows by heart, and he would always recite it whenever the topic of mice came up. (The other is a poem he wrote in grade one and goes like this: "I had a little doll. I stuck it in the wall. That's all." Pure literary genius!) I've always liked the poem, and I sincerely agree that mice are rather nice. Which is probably why I've felt so conflicted about trapping the one that had decided to become our new roomie.

I first spotted him on Saturday, scampering across the dining room floor - so cute, with the little ears and feet just a-going. But the reality of it is that they poop everywhere and get into our food and garbage, so he had to go. We considered buying one of those live traps, so we could release him back into the "wild" - but then we realized that there is no "wild" in Toronto. Anywhere we left him, he would simply make his way into someone else's home. So we got a trap that promised to kill him instantly so there would be no suffering, and last night I heard it go off.

The poor little guy! All he wanted was a warm place to sleep and food to eat, and all he got was killed and flushed down the toilet.

It's a cruel world.