#37 “It was a Life”

Dear Don1001,

Something happened a couple of days ago that I can’t shake. A field mouse had decided to make the bunker it’s home. And after seeing it scurry about a couple of times, I put out a couple of glue traps. After learning to avoid stepping on these traps I had forgot about them until one night while in a deep sleep I’m awakened by high-pitched screams. It took but a second to realize that the rodent had become stuck in the glue trap, as I lay there in bed listening, it became clear the mouse wasn’t going to die from being stuck. I was hoping that it would die or stop screaming but the poor creature just wouldn’t comply with either option. So after about twenty minutes of listening to this wail, I got up to dispatch it. I turned on the light and the poor creative began to squirm, I calmly rolled up an old copy of the New York Times Style Section. As I approached the field mouse it looked up at me and began to jerk more violently at the glue that had it in a literal death grip. For some unknown reason I became anxious and I felt myself becoming more tense by the moment and in a burst of nervous energy, I quickly took the mouse’s life with a couple of quick full body blows. The mouse’s death was instantaneous but probably terrifying. I sat there looking at the lifeless body of that field mouse; it looked back at me, eyes open and staring at me. And for some unknown reason, it bothered me, a lot. I was brought up in an Appalachian culture; we killed animals of every kind, to eat them. The hunting of animals was never gratuitous nor was it glorified. For my family hunting was a cheap protein source and on occasion done for profit (trapping for skins). This detachment to the cycle of life enabled me, with somewhat ease, to migrate to a way of life, where murder is one of the occupational hazards. When I was in the “business”, I carried death on my shoulder, it was my friend. So I was shocked at the melancholy that overcame me, the empathy of the fear and terror that this creature experienced right before it’s death. And after a couple of days I’m beginning to understand that the field mouse and I weren’t that far apart, we just wanted to enjoy life. So now I don’t want to hurt anyone, anymore just because they don’t agree with me. I really do believe that there is going to be whole-scale political violence in the streets of America but I think my Liberty loving brothers and sisters are going to have to count me out when it comes time to “lock & load”. I’ve come to comprehend that killing is the ultimate “crisis management” and is quite often the result of being lazy and stupid. I don’t know if I could found a way of dealing with my rodent friend without terminating him, I don’t know because I never tried. And maybe that’s the problem with the human condition; violence has always been a time-honored solution to a lack of communication skills and empathy. Disagree enough with me and I can justify stomping the shit out of you. Pose enough threat to my tribe (real or not) and it becomes quite easy to rationalize preemptively destroying your tribe first because the threat was too much to leave to chance. “We just couldn’t stand by while there was any potential that (fill in the blank) could now or at some point in the future could become a threat, so we "nuked" them. It was only way we could guarantee peace.” I confess that destroying anyone who disagrees with you is a very neat way to win philosophic battles because there is no need to acknowledge the nuances or shortcomings that are inherent with your own ideology. It doesn’t take a lot of thought power to state, you are with us or you are against us, and those who are against us, you deserve to die. I can no longer live with such rigidity, maybe because I’m on the last part of my “ride” I don’t know, but I realize that the field mouse’s life meant something, all life does and it means enough to acknowledge

it's right to exist.

      Breath of God upon my lips, Brother Gregory

You can see videos of these sage observations here: http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum
                                           www.bell-jarboefilms.com