Non-Toxic Living 4 All

I died today. I was found by a kind, sweet woman who does wildlife rescue. I was so sick, I could barely open my eyes. She took me inside, cradling me in her warm arms, and made me warm and comfortable. I opened my eyes and looked at her and thanked her for making my last few minutes as comfortable as possible.

But i was too sick to keep fighting anymore.
I had eaten a mouse that was poisoned, and it made me very sick. I closed my yellow eyes for the last time and went somewhere else. Please, all I ask is never use poison to kill the mice, poison kills owls, like me. All I wanted was a mouse for dinner.

I died today….       Courtesy of http://ourbeautifulworldanduniverse.com/

Me, personally, I detest rodents.  They completely freak me out.  I’m downright phobic around them.  I have cats.  If I could have an owl too, I probably would.  (Who could read Harry Potter and not want their own Hedwig?)  I love snakes but I can’t feed them.

I grew up in NYC.  I still remember my mother going berserk and cussing out the landlady when I was little because they kept rat poison in the basement of our apartment building.  A poisoned rat found its way to our 3rd floor walk up and died about a foot and a half away from my bed.  I remember waking up to her screams in the hallway about what she would have done if the rat had bit me before it died.

I can understand the use of and need for other (toxic) methods in urban settings as there are no natural predators around.  I personally feel that glue traps are the better alternative.  Poison is not instant and you probably don’t want sick/poisoned mice wandering, much less dying in areas where you can’t remove them…. eww!

That being said, owls are not city dwellers.  Compound this with the fact that our country has a bit of a large feral cat population.  So why do we need poisons exactly?  Much less poisons that can keep killing multiple animals, birds, etc?  Where does the poisoned critter go, the landfill?  Then what?

We need to start looking several moves ahead and realizing the consequences of our actions.  Most people I know wouldn’t care about killing a mouse, but they’d be devastated to kill a cat or an owl and they couldn’t live with themselves if they knew they had poisoned a child by way of that mouse.. or cat… or owl… or vegetable garden.

Choose wisely.

Maggie