Rats (Move it to Miscellaneous)

[tectak]

We used to shake their dried up shit pebbles off of a fake Christmas tree we hauled out every year. When one got in my room I became obsessed with them. At first I saw his outline, as a swift phantom gliding across the floor. Then I saw him in the morning hopping onto my desk and scavenging the crumbs of food that fell from my mouth. Maybe the stench from all the piled up fast food wrappers lured him in.
I caught him inside of a printer when he crawled into the plastic cave. Against my fear I sprang from my bed and frantically sealed him in. Immediately I heard rapid scratching sounds. I carried the creature in the printer and deposited him in the front lawn.
Later, I read that they could find their ways back home and every sound became a mouse. I followed the dusty carpet besides the walls looking for grey grease trails that I read mice would leave as they dragged their balls across the floor.
I went to jiffy lube and there was shit and ripped up fabric used for nesting material in my air filter.
I must have been breathing it in every time I turned on the A.C.
At one point, every creak was a potential mouse. At night I imagined a whole city of them in the walls. Nests and nests and each nest containing one male amidst a brood of females.
I would spy loose wires and construe that it was one of their hairless tails which are used to help them balance.
I smeared too much peanut butter on the traps.
I wore a glove because my father told me they can smell you’re scent if you handle a trap with your bare hands.
My fingers trembled as I set the traps
The first trap probably took me an hour.
When one was finally set, I carefully carried it on my palm and set it against the wall in my room.
We only ever caught mice in the attic.
Most of the time they were dead and stiff before we carried them to the garbage
But one time I saw one die.
My father and I had been watching T.V. and gradually became suspicious of a rustling we heard from the attic. I saw a pregnant mouse writhing with a broken spine. I knew the rustling we heard was this creature’s suffering. The new life brewing in its stomach seemed like a grotesque goiter.
A type of panic that grabs you unexpectedly seized me while my father cracked the creature’s skull with the butt of a flashlight.
We wouldn’t talk about this Mouse. I knew the tears I wanted to spill showed my guilt and innocence.

Hi brownlie,
Not poetry and you know it. Make it poetic? Not me. That's your job. Anyway, the whole thing is a cliche in my house Needs reposting in another forum.
Best,
tectak