Today I had a horrifying experience.
As a Pagan and an ex-vegan, I still feel the need to treat nature well and with respect, regardless of the situation, but unfortunately work today seemed to focus mainly on the demise of small animals.
Working in a bakery, it is only natural to have mice show up now and again. To me, I figure as long as they aren't getting into the food and making a mess, it should be okay. Unfortunately, the entire reason mice go to places in the first place is so that they can get into the food and consequently, make a mess. Therefor the mice had to go. The proper way to handle this kind of situation would have been to order enclosed traps and relocate the mice to a nearby field, which we have plenty of. I do understand that there are 1. too many mice, and 2. not enough time to do this. So, in the end this means that they must be killed. As much as I don't like the idea of this, it is understood. Personally, I have no problem disposing of a dead mouse. To be honest, I am a little bit afraid of the living ones since I got bit by one as a kid. Though a dead one doesn't bother me. Since this is the case, I was elected head of Mouse Disposal Crew. Actually, I was the only member of mouse disposal crew, due to the fact that we have other things to do other than play with dead mice, and also that they had to be quickly removed since they were decaying and the whole place smelled horribly of dead rodent. Sad to say, I can identify the smell of dead rodent very well.
Moving right along.
As I go to dispose of what I thought would be one or two dead mice in snap traps, I find that my employers have decided to use the least humane form of trap possible: a glue trap. And little did I know that there were not one or two mice, but seven. Two of which were still a alive and stuck in the little gooey trays.
As previously mentioned, it was a horrifying experience to see the small creature staring up at me with its shining, beaded eyes, with it's nose and feet stuck in a thick layer of gel. It immediately began squirming and tugging in fear as I approached. Feeling there was no kind of polite way to dispose of it, I placed a paper towel over the entire tray, covering both the living mouse and the couple dead ones that lay stuck next to it. At this point I was unsure of what to do. Do I put it in the plastic bag and let it suffocate slowly? Do I quickly end it's life by stepping on it? I felt that the second would have been the nicer thing to do, but on the other hand who am I to play God and take a life? it is not my choice when something should die. So instead I tied it into the plastic bag and tossed it into the dumpster. Perhaps the poor creature will free itself from the trap and make its way into a safe dumpster haven. As unlikely as this is, I can hope. The only thing worse than the one still wriggling, was the small mouse that had to have only been a few days old. No larger than my thumb he stood stuck in the glue, ribs fluctuating with each panicked breath as my hand drew closer to pick up the tray. The saddest part of the whole experience was the fact that this small one began squeaking in terror, trying to escape. This was not something I would like to have to do again, although I do know that there is another glue trap in the back room.
Scary that this all happened by 7:00 am.
As the day progressed we had several, and by several I mean anywhere between 5 and 8 people woth arms bigger around than my head, come in to install our new proof box. How exciting. Lucky for me, my space was taken over and I had to relocate to a different table right in the way of every person that walked by with a huge piece of the metal box. Please note my sarcasm. We usually have seven or so people working at the same time in our bake shop, occasionally a dishwasher or another employee from a different part of the building will come in. Today we ended up with a total of 15 people in the room at once. Mind you, this bakeshop is not very large.
One of my co-workers then said "In a perfect world, we would be working at different times." Meaning the bakers and the men that were installing the proof box.
This then got me thinking "What is a perfect world?"
I pondered this thought for quite a while as I put danishes and cinnamon rolls on a tray.
I then finally come to the conclusion that we already live in a perfect world, everything is perfect as it is. This theory is still in the works, considering that I haven't had anyone to discuss this yet, but so far I can not think of a reason why this world is not perfect. Yes, I understand that each individual person is not perfect, but people as a whole are. But then you must break that down. Are only half of the people perfect? No, because no one is perfect. And if no one is perfect, then there is nothing above imperfect. We know nothing greater than imperfection. And if there is nothing greater than imperfection, then imperfection is indeed perfection. If there were anything that was indeed 100% perfect, that would then make something else obsolete. And obsoletion is imperfection. Imperfection is necessary for perfection. Again, I am still testing this theory and I welcome any criticisms and will answer or reply to them in later posts.
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