The animal shelter experience has been hell at best. After calling for over an hour only to realize the nearest shelter was 30 minutes away from me in either direction, I took the little critter as pictured above in to be treated late last night, thinking that would be the best option for him. I didn't want him to suffer.
I felt crazy guilty for bringing him knowing that he'd spend the night, possibly his last one, in a wire cage at an animal shelter.
But I was comforted to know that he'd receive medical attention in the morning.
However, when I called at 11:30 this morning, the doctors nor nurses hadn't even looked at him.
I made the operator transfer me to be able to speak with medical staff. Finally I got someone on the line who admitted they hadn't even checked on the little guy but that it indeed was a mouse: not a rat or chinchilla. Mind you this is 10 hours after I drove all the way over there and so 10 hours that the little guy could have been sitting in front of my bathroom heater in warmth and more comfort than the fucking shelter bothered to show him.
I understand they looked at him like he was a rodent and destined to be euthanized, but if so, what kind of shelter are they running? I thought the point of having a 24 hour emergency animal shelter was to have a place to bring dying or severly injured animals to be treated.
( at this point I also have to ask myself would they have done the same to a raccoon? A possom? Whether they are nuisances or rodents or however people in their infinite wisdom want to classify them, aren't all animals still part of the food chain? Aren't all animals contributing to the cycle of life?)
The nurse or doctor or whomever I was speaking to said they don't typically treat rodents at all and it was up to me to decide whether or not to euthanize him or not.
I am not God. I do not play God. I have never in my life had to stand in and play God, but today I had to.
I started crying over the phone with her and asked if someone else would take him and treat him. She said probably not and that not euthanizing him would probably end up in him dying a slow death.
So I played God and gave the clearance to have him euthanized.
I'm sure all of you guys think I'm crazy that I'm making such a fuss over a mouse I had for less than a few hours. But my cold cold heart had compassion for this guy. Something about the way that he just let me help him made me want to do everything in my power to get him proper medical attention.
In th end, I don't know how much good I did him other than I prevented him from dying out in the cold or being eaten and then getting that animal sick as well.
All this just reminds me of the miracle of life and how short it really is. How little control we actually have over our lives and the lives of out loved ones.
Maybe it was that little mouse's time to go. He was so cute. I never could have kept him, so why I got involved in the first place is beyond me. But I guess I made the decision for him. And I'm not happy about it.
