The Conditions for mercy

The cats spotted them first.

Their slitted pupils widened, swallowing their irises. My kitten’s tail poofed up like a raccoon’s. Both cats stood deathly still, feline faces pressed against the mesh of the basement screen door. 

And beneath my back deck, below a motley village of peeling, crooked birdhouses and swaying feeders, I saw them too.

Flashes of grey slipping through the gaps in wood pallets. Pink, fleshy tails sticking out of the firewood pile.

Rats.

Their grey bodies wove in and out of the stack of freshly split logs, noses poking from crevices, whiskers twitching as birds jostled the feeders above, showering the ground with corn, millet, and black sunflower seeds.

Several rats darted out of their hiding spots to seize the scattered prize, as if a dinner bell had rung.

The cats grew excited. Their tails thumped against the cement floor.

Bile rose in my throat.

The word alone sent a shiver down my spine.

Rat.

I felt, as my eyes fixed on the rats skittering across the decorative stones, an intense revulsion, followed by something else—something that rose within me like a murderous serpent.

Hate.

Then I came back to myself, shaken—

to the person who loves all wild things, who rescues wasps from drowning in the pool, who handles jumping spiders in his garden as though they were puppies. 

It’s not some deep-rooted prejudice against rodents, either. I watch in amusement as squirrels, who are really just fluffier, tree-hugging rats, make their daily attempt to catapult themselves at my feeders, stuffing their little faces while the birds watch from a distance. 

Every summer, I leave out wads of peanut butter for the neighborhood opossums, who have some of the most nightmarish faces you’ll ever see, not to mention that same long, rat-like tail. I feed the skunks too, despite the sharp, sour odor that follows them. 

To this day, my favorite movie is Ratatouille.

Why, then, had I felt such instinctive hatred toward these rodents, doing only what all rodents do—scavenging the bits of food left behind by the rest of us?

My first thoughts when I saw them were:

Kill. Remove. Exterminate.

It scared me, knowing there was that kind of violence in me.

I couldn’t understand it.

I told my mom about them, and her reaction was the same as my initial one. She wanted them gone and didn’t care how it happened.

So I took care of it.

We had convinced ourselves the rats were digging holes under the foundation of the house, and that by removing them, we would prevent any damage they might cause.

Under the deck sat a neglected stack of wood pallets I sometimes used as makeshift vegetable beds. It was clear this was where the rats had nested. After relocating the feeders to the nearby tree line to remove their food source, I set about destroying their home.

I didn’t see any signs of them until I lifted the second-to-last pallet from the stack. As I did, there was a sudden flurry of panicked movement as several small rats skittered away, squeaking in terror, toward a clump of tall grass a few feet away. 

I looked down at their “nest,” a sad little pile of straw and strands of plastic from the deteriorating pool liner.

There was no hole under the foundation. Not that it mattered.

I set about the next task.

The rats had escaped into shallow burrows dug into a mound of sandy soil, clusters of long grass jutting from it. I found each tiny opening and stuck the hose into them, one by one, flooding their burrows. When that was done, I leveled the whole area with my pickaxe and sowed flower seeds over the strip of now-flat dirt.

I haven’t seen a rat since.

The flowers are coming in nicely.

Whenever I think about it, all I can see is the unmistakable terror on their faces as they scattered, trying to stay together, while I, a colossus, ripped their home apart, forced them into underground dead ends, and filled their burrows with water while they were still inside.

And for what? Because they ate discarded birdseed in front of me, like the squirrels and chipmunks do every day? Or was it because I had been taught my whole life that rats are dirty, disease-ridden vermin?

It’s made me question other things, too.

Why do we look at the squirrel with amusement and the rat with murderous intent?

Why do we plant flowers for the butterfly, yet reserve the heel of our boot for the spider?

When did beauty become a condition for mercy?

It’s no different from the dandelion, that bright yellow herald of spring, a valuable early source of nectar for bees and butterflies, every part of it—from root to flower—edible and medicinal.

And yet every spring, its fate is a generous dousing of Roundup. When we look at this flower, our first thought is not of its color or its useful properties, but of a single arbitrary word—weed. 

And weeds, like rats, must be killed on sight. 

Why? Nobody ever tells us that part, do they? Only that we must look upon certain things as though they are unworthy of life.

The plight of rats and dandelions alike: to be guilty only of existing—and sentenced to death for it.

The instinct to kill things we’ve been taught to hate extends far beyond the rats and dandelions in our yards.

We’ve learned to hate “the enemy” of the day to justify marching off to war against people we’ve never even met—people we might have befriended in another life. We’ve learned to tolerate the use of our tax dollars for bombing neighborhoods not so different from our own.

When the only difference between us and those living in them is the language we scream in.

Many of us wonder, as we look around at the state of our country, how violence and division have been allowed to fester unchecked. But maybe it’s because we treat our fellow humans in much the same way we do rats and dandelions,

when they fail to meet our conditions for mercy.