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I hope there's not a special Hell for negligent pet homicide
I killed the mice. Not on purpose, I swear. My only excuse is that I've had a LOT of things on my mind lately and taking care of pets (especially half-wild pseudo-pets) has slipped to an extremely low priority.
So I left them in the car on a hot sunny day. I made sure they had plenty of water and cracked the windows for them, but it was 90 degrees and ... well ...
I feel awful about it.
The thing that makes me feel a little better is that, having grown up in a household full of animals, I'm well aware that pets and especially small pets generally tend to come to some kind of bad end. My family has killed more pets in far worse ways than any sane person could ever do on purpose. Collectively, we already have the preventable deaths of numerous rabbits, guinea pigs, parakeets, goldfish, lizards, cats and dogs on our conscience, not to mention quite a lot of farm animals. What's a couple of mice?
We probably sound like horrible people now. But if you've ever tried to keep a goldfish or a guinea pig alive in a house full of small kids, let alone raise chickens in -40F, you'll understand.
So I left them in the car on a hot sunny day. I made sure they had plenty of water and cracked the windows for them, but it was 90 degrees and ... well ...
I feel awful about it.
The thing that makes me feel a little better is that, having grown up in a household full of animals, I'm well aware that pets and especially small pets generally tend to come to some kind of bad end. My family has killed more pets in far worse ways than any sane person could ever do on purpose. Collectively, we already have the preventable deaths of numerous rabbits, guinea pigs, parakeets, goldfish, lizards, cats and dogs on our conscience, not to mention quite a lot of farm animals. What's a couple of mice?
We probably sound like horrible people now. But if you've ever tried to keep a goldfish or a guinea pig alive in a house full of small kids, let alone raise chickens in -40F, you'll understand.