By Eva Menovsky

MOUSE IN THE BIN

Today there was a mouse in my bin.

Earlier I had taken the bag out of the bin. But I was in a hurry so left the bin bag on the floor. When I came home at night, I was too exhausted to take it out. I was reading on the bed, with the lights fully on. When I heard, this plastic scratch. I knew I had trouble with mice, and thought it was the trap that I had set. But there in the far, I saw a little mouse making his way to the top of the full bin bag. I sat there on the edge of my bed, frozen, watching the mouse make it’s way. Slowly I called my friend, asking what I should do. I whispered so the mouse wouldn’t get scared. And there he went into the bag. Shaken, I lifted the bag and took it to the garden. 

A while later, I couldn’t stop wondering whether the mouse was really in the bin or it had secretly gotten out. Too afraid to move the bag I stared at it, did I see something move? I made sure, I closed the door properly so the mouse wouldn’t find a way in. I realized that the mouse, couldn’t get in anymore. He would either suffocate in the plastic or he would have had to bite his way through the bag, and even then he wouldn’t come inside. I was saddened by this thought, the mouse, who did nothing wrong, will never see his family again. He will never see his friends. There is this big world out there, and he’s lost in it. I started wondering why this saddened me so. Why it had never saddened me before. 

Maybe it was the fact, that my mom got a cat a few years ago. We had another cat, but she and I couldn’t bond over one thing. But her new cat, my new cat, two years old, he and I are close. He always sleeps next to me, or on me. He licks my neck in the morning and cuddles me after. He always comes immediately when I come home. Maybe my cat had made me more empathetic. Maybe I connected more with animals, which maybe I never did before. 

I thought about the animals that we eat everyday, and how we torture them for our own good. How they see their friend and family get killed. Why did I never thought of that? What had awaken in me with that little baby mouse, that suddenly I thought of that? Maybe the cows and the pigs always seemed so tough, they were grounded and strong. So I didn’t think what pain, physically or mentally, would do to them. But mice are small and vulnerable, and soft. So pain, even the smallest amount would hurt them. But that doesn’t mean that we should hurt the things, animals or people who we think, can take it. Cause nobody deserves pain, in whatever kind. 

I guess that the problem, isn’t it? We hurt the people who we think can take it.