Postscript
Enforced cohabitation
P. J. Kavanagh
Presumably, most of us dislike killing things. The occasional mosquito perhaps, in self-defence, but on the whole it makes us feel better if we try to get on with our fellow creatures. I eat meat, wear leather shoes and make no claims to a special refinement on this point. There is of course a hardening of the heart necessary to soldiers and, let us hope, executioners, but nearly everyone recognises that such a condition is not permanently desirable, though nearly everyone is capable of it. For example, I was once, only once, invited by friends to go grouse-shooting and I declined. After a couple of days hanging around ennui d'Ecosse forced me reluctantly to join them; armed, but only for ceremonial purposes. After two more days of obstructive heather, rarity of birds, of their elusiveness and ability to rise a hundred yards ahead, far out of range, my frustration made me realise it would now be easy for me to strangle one with my bare hands.
I once killed an adder (first making sure
it was an adder) which was peacefully asleep on a patch of grass where a young child crawled. I hit it with the back of a rake and it felt an outrage, the creature was so beautiful. The way animals look, alas, has much to do with the way we feel about killing them.
Then there were the rats. Country rats are not like ones in towns. They feed, on the whole, cleanly and their fur shines almost as brightly as their eyes. They too are beautiful. They were far from the house and we tolerated them, until they began strolling about outside and then tried to get in. I counted five in the garden, remembered a farmer telling me that for every one you saw there were ten more, and bought some poison. This I put in their runs and after three days their feeding stopped; no more rats. It was not an enjoyable thing to do.
I mention this because I am at present in a quandary and a fix. I work in what is best described as a ruined cottage, patched-up and made warm and weather-proof, which is a good distance from the house and therefore reasonable territory for wild creatures to invade. In ten years none has done so, except spiders, until two weeks ago.
I was sitting here one evening, after dark, when there was a rustle and a sudden movement and a vole (they have short tails) ran slowly across one end of the room. At the same moment — which is odd — at the other end of the room there was a rattling descent of black tarry deposit in the chimney, followed, very fast, by a different creature which flicked into a crack in the fireplace. This one had a long tail and I feared it might be a small rat, which I did not like at all. But why was I made so uncomfortable? Why did the noise and movement give me gooseflesh? Why did I that night put down poison, the same that had so quickly disposed of the rats? I realised that in no Franciscan sense could we cohabit: rustlings in the waste-paper basket, quick movements seen out of the corner of the eye, frightened me, which is ridiculous.
What is more ridiculous is that morning after morning I have found that the large quantities of poison I put out have dis- appeared. A fieldmouse (for such I now know it is) thrives on the stuff that is so quickly fatal to rats. I saw it last night, tucking in, so eager for it that its paws were on the edge of the tobacco-tin and it did not startle when I approached but stared at me, its almost transparent ears pricked. It was a Yellow-Necked mouse (I looked it up) and so handsome, shining, and intelligent-looking, I could not possibly poison it now that we have been, as it were, introduced. I see this morning that it has been dragging old Woodbine packets to the fireplace to make a nest. I do not want it. I have introduced the cat (who will not eat it), who is old, and shows no interest. It is I, not she, who keeps glancing nervously at the fireplace, wondering what to do.
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