Today I was running in my new shoes I saw a mouse. It looked dead. It was on the path, which is frequently traveled by bicyclists so to spare it a rather undignified squishing I tried to push it into the grass with a bike tire lever thingie that happened to be there on the ground.

But then the mouse moved a little. It wasn't dead! This was very troubling. It was obviously very badly injured and near death, but not dead. I felt like I should kill it and put it out of its rodent misery, but I couldn't really bring myself to do this. I think I could have stomached stepping on it, but I was wearing new shoes. "I wish Celeste or Tim Godshall was here," I thought. "They are the kind of people who know how to deal with difficult moral questions like this. Difficult moral questions that involve small dying animals." But they weren't. A bicyclists whizzed by, barely having time to catch a glimpse of my confused, torn expression. "I wish he would have stopped and given me advice," I thought.

I wimped out. I pushed the mouse into the grass with a stick. It squirmed a little. Maybe its spine was broken.

In 419 news: When I insisted that they send me money, they threatened to cut me off. So I begged them to let me back in on the deal. I wrote them today to let them know that I've sent the US$12,500. When they tell me that they haven't gotten it, I'm going to accuse them of lying to me and taking my money.

posted by weiss @ 9:43 PM