Yet Another Death Of Yet Another Mouse

Before I start retlling my tale of my vacation to the Italian countryside, I have to report seeing a young rat slowly die.

I was running out to the car to get to "work" at the U.  When the door opens up, I look down at the glue trap closer to my car and see this, and I'm not joking, this cute mouse, churning its joints from side to side, but being unable to move, either because it was startled by me or because it's still trying to break free.

It still had a lot of energy left in it, so I'm afraid that the poor mouse got trapped recently, like that morning.  We're in the middle of a heat wave, so I guess he and other mouses were headed towards shade inside our then-uncooled house to look for food.

There was one on the other corner of the garage door, but I'm guessing Father (who has not kicked me out yet, despite his threats, thank Buddha) took that yesterday morning because it was "used" -- there was a mouse that's been dead on the trap for a long time, so long that it decomposed.  Didn't bother telling him.  I think he scraped the carcass of that mouse onto the driveway.  I saw that just after I saw the still-alive mouse.  It really looks like a clump of dirt.  Is that what happens to our bodies, or even us, when we die?

Anyway, when I saw that struggling mouse fail to free itself, I thought back to the first mouse I saw dying.  When I set upon it at the kitchen, it was lurching itself forward.  That was hard to watch.  This was, too.  But mice are a sanitary problem, I reminded myself.  They can track feces and spread disease.  I certainly don't want them to die, but they could kill me, or Grandmother.  Most important of all at that moment was going to work.  So I looked up, went around the poor vermin, and backed out of the driveway.

I'm scared to see if it's still alive this morning.

I wonder what's going through the rat's mind as it's there, clinging to life.  First of all, are mice sentient-enough beings to know its fate is about to be sealed?  How cruel.  Does it feel fear, desperation?  Does it feel pain?  Does it cry?  Does it comprehend life enough to know the point where he's about to lose his?

This is getting to be too much.