Angel of Mercy, Angel of Death

I have twice been called upon to act as an angel of mercy and put a tiny suffering creature out of its misery.

About 9 years ago when I was living in a tiny studio apartment above a takeaway in London, I had a little problem with mice. I didn’t actually consider it that much of a problem as the mice were the cutest sweetest little teeny tiny things. They hid themselves very well during the day and only came out at night when there would be a little party under my bed.

If ever I caught sight of one of them it would make a break for it and be nowhere to be seen within seconds. They were so cute and so sweet that I started leaving saucers of food out for them.

Being a little concerned about the spread of disease and all that, I had a chat to my landlord and told him that there was a little problem with mice in the apartment.

He said he would put down some poison.

Not a chance! I said in horror.

Couldn’t they just find the holes where the mice where coming in and close those up?

Nope, poison, he said.

So that was the end of that and I decided to just live with my little friends. They were really no bother.

One morning my sister and I were on our way out for the day. As we stepped out of the apartment we saw a mouse that had clearly been stamped on.

Half of its body was crushed, bearing the imprint of the shoe that had crushed it!

As if this wasn’t horrifying enough, in the next instant it moved! It was still alive!

There was only one other apartment on the same level as ours, and we knew that the man who lived in it worked at the takeaway downstairs. We had heard him come home at around midnight. This must have been when he trod on the poor mouse. It was now 9 in the morning! The poor thing had been suffering death agonies for 9 solid hours!

There was only one thing to do. I had to be its angel of mercy. Feeling sick to my stomach, I took a piece of paper and laid it over the mouse’s body. Then I put a paperback book down on top of that, took an 8 pound dumbbell from my apartment and beat down on the book as hard as I possibly could, one blow, two blows, three.

From the first blow bits of blood and body parts splattered out from under the paperback and piece of paper.

I wasn’t going to stop at just one blow and risk the poor thing suffering any longer. I was going to make sure it had gone to the other side. After raining three powerful blows down onto its body my sister and I ran back into the apartment, crying and shaking and shuddering with horror.

Gradually we built up the courage to go back out again and clean up the carnage. However, I knew without a doubt that I had done the right thing as an angel of mercy.

We were furious with our neighbor but he didn’t seem to understand the problem.

‘Yes, Yes! I step on mouse!’ he said proudly.

He spoke little English and didn’t seem to understand why I had an issue with him deliberately stepping on a mouse.

I have often thought of that horrific experience over the years. Being an extremely squeamish person who can’t bear to see anything in pain, I shudder, can’t bear to look and nearly throw up when someone cuts their finger, so being an angel of mercy and mercy killing that mouse was an immensely difficult thing for me to do.

Unfortunately, I was called on to do another angel of mercy killing.

I was riding home from gym one day and had just decided to do an extra 5 kilometer cycle. I had just got to the end of my route and turned back when I saw a tiny bird lying on its back in the road.

My first impression was that it was fatally injured, probably hit by a car. In the next instant it twitched and blinked. ‘Oh NO Oh NO!’ I shouted to the universe ‘It’s still alive!’

I stood there and looked at it, debating my options. Could I pick it up and take it home? No, that would just prolong its death and be just as cruel as leaving it to die right where it lay.

‘I have to mercy kill it, don’t I?’ I asked the empty desert spread out to my right and the deserted apartment buildings to my left.

How long has it been lying here suffering? I wondered. Not too many cars came that way, but when they did they drove pretty fast. It must have been hit hard enough to be fatally injured but not hard enough to be instantly killed.

My intuition quickly gave me my answer. There was no one else to do it. It was up to me to be an angel of mercy and mercy kill the tiny bird. I put my ipod on full blast to mask the sound and rode my bicycle as fast as I could over the tiny bird’s prone body.

‘AAAAAAAAHHHHH’ I screamed in horrified anguish as I went over it, the ipod failing to disguise a tiny ‘cheep’ as the tyres went over the body. ‘OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD’ I screamed. I had to turn the bike around and make sure I had killed it properly. It looked dead, but I couldn’t take the chance and went over it a second time screaming all the way.

Nothing can ever erase the sound of its final ‘cheep’ as my bicycle tyre went over it.

I'm willing to be an angel of mercy, if there is no one else to do it, but I hope with all my heart that if an angel of mercy is needed next time, can there be someone else around to do it?