A kill
Today I had to end a life.
(I would like beg your pardon in advance for the incoherence of the following. It is not something I feel comfortable writing or thinking about, but I have to do this.)
I was walking my dog and she apparently thought tonight a nice evening for some roadside field vole hunting.
Unfortunately(?) she was quite successful.
I was too slow in pulling her back after I noticed her having gotten wind of something _really_ interesting, _really_ interesting things for Tessa (the dog) usually being live animals possessing qualities she appreciates in prey (small size, even smaller teeth, not being a moose/an elk etc.).
Soon enough the terrified screams of some small mammal were audible, and while I then repeatedly tried to pull Tessa back and managed to get her to drop the poor vole, she got it(gender unknown) into her teeth a few more times, and even threw it through the air in a horrific (to me, at least) arc of maybe two meters in height and three in length.
After this I managed to keep Tessa away from her prey, but after trying to get the horridly twitching vole to its feet by pushing it gently with my shoe I soon realized that this was one vole less playing evolution.
The dawning understanding of the situation - suffering vole on the road, the hunter also on the road, and me between them; my dog to be kept away from the vole for various reasons (vole-carried diseases contagious at least to man, maybe also to dog, small bones possibly dangerous to dog intestines although I don't know if Tessa intended to eat the vole or just play with it - dogs are after all a bit like wolf pups that refuse to grow up when they grow up, etc.), but the vole still somehow to be at the least granted as quick and painless a death as possible - came with some underappreciated part of my brain giving a warning cry, something like "Can't you see you're getting hysterical?! Act! Get a grip!".
Feeling like a machine I pushed the vole to the hard dirt beside the road with my foot, and then - I cannot really describe the sound and feeling of crushing skull (and I sure don't want anyone to feel as bad from reading this as I did after the deed, but, for my sake, this has to be written) - a foot stamped down. Something broke under the sole (and somehow, maybe something also broke some distance above the sole).
Punishment for what it was I don't know, but the wretched thing still twitched while that foot pushed it once more, into the grass on the side of the ditch. Another quick crushing movement. But the soil was so soft, so damn soft this time - love, let it still be that the pain had ended by then, for one of us at least.
A few steps the machine still took, it's friend, the probably confused dog at heel, before the world came back, in weak but terrifying waves of a strange nausea. Then we got moving again, some tears trying to form in my eyes - unfortunately my tear ducts have failed to cooperate with the rest of the me trying to cry for many years now.
Questions and doubts followed, ideas like "That was much too easy, it should have hurt more, you bastard!" "Yeah, now you feel bad, but what about the flies and mosquitoes you (mostly) swat like they were nothing?" "I hope I'll never get used to this" "Remember this was neither your nor Tessa's fault" and so on.
What did NOT cross my mind (and please crush ME, if ever it does) were things like "But that was just a vole!" "You did the right thing" or even "Don't feel bad, you did the right thing".
Well, that was that for tonight's "Tour inside Stephu's mind".
If you wonder how I could get so upset from such a small thing, well, go dig out your heart with a Coregonus albula, at least it's you doing it (and you'd probably enjoy the dead fish, too) - this was quite a scary and upsetting experience for me and that is that. If you don't mind killing voles - fine; your world is like that. I do mind - even better; my world is like that. That's the world for you, everyone's right but they're not allowed to tell the others their truth - sad, boohoohoo.
O.K., hysterical raging over and out.
(I would like beg your pardon in advance for the incoherence of the following. It is not something I feel comfortable writing or thinking about, but I have to do this.)
I was walking my dog and she apparently thought tonight a nice evening for some roadside field vole hunting.
Unfortunately(?) she was quite successful.
I was too slow in pulling her back after I noticed her having gotten wind of something _really_ interesting, _really_ interesting things for Tessa (the dog) usually being live animals possessing qualities she appreciates in prey (small size, even smaller teeth, not being a moose/an elk etc.).
Soon enough the terrified screams of some small mammal were audible, and while I then repeatedly tried to pull Tessa back and managed to get her to drop the poor vole, she got it(gender unknown) into her teeth a few more times, and even threw it through the air in a horrific (to me, at least) arc of maybe two meters in height and three in length.
After this I managed to keep Tessa away from her prey, but after trying to get the horridly twitching vole to its feet by pushing it gently with my shoe I soon realized that this was one vole less playing evolution.
The dawning understanding of the situation - suffering vole on the road, the hunter also on the road, and me between them; my dog to be kept away from the vole for various reasons (vole-carried diseases contagious at least to man, maybe also to dog, small bones possibly dangerous to dog intestines although I don't know if Tessa intended to eat the vole or just play with it - dogs are after all a bit like wolf pups that refuse to grow up when they grow up, etc.), but the vole still somehow to be at the least granted as quick and painless a death as possible - came with some underappreciated part of my brain giving a warning cry, something like "Can't you see you're getting hysterical?! Act! Get a grip!".
Feeling like a machine I pushed the vole to the hard dirt beside the road with my foot, and then - I cannot really describe the sound and feeling of crushing skull (and I sure don't want anyone to feel as bad from reading this as I did after the deed, but, for my sake, this has to be written) - a foot stamped down. Something broke under the sole (and somehow, maybe something also broke some distance above the sole).
Punishment for what it was I don't know, but the wretched thing still twitched while that foot pushed it once more, into the grass on the side of the ditch. Another quick crushing movement. But the soil was so soft, so damn soft this time - love, let it still be that the pain had ended by then, for one of us at least.
A few steps the machine still took, it's friend, the probably confused dog at heel, before the world came back, in weak but terrifying waves of a strange nausea. Then we got moving again, some tears trying to form in my eyes - unfortunately my tear ducts have failed to cooperate with the rest of the me trying to cry for many years now.
Questions and doubts followed, ideas like "That was much too easy, it should have hurt more, you bastard!" "Yeah, now you feel bad, but what about the flies and mosquitoes you (mostly) swat like they were nothing?" "I hope I'll never get used to this" "Remember this was neither your nor Tessa's fault" and so on.
What did NOT cross my mind (and please crush ME, if ever it does) were things like "But that was just a vole!" "You did the right thing" or even "Don't feel bad, you did the right thing".
Well, that was that for tonight's "Tour inside Stephu's mind".
If you wonder how I could get so upset from such a small thing, well, go dig out your heart with a Coregonus albula, at least it's you doing it (and you'd probably enjoy the dead fish, too) - this was quite a scary and upsetting experience for me and that is that. If you don't mind killing voles - fine; your world is like that. I do mind - even better; my world is like that. That's the world for you, everyone's right but they're not allowed to tell the others their truth - sad, boohoohoo.
O.K., hysterical raging over and out.
posted by Stephu | 21:44
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