March 21,2008
Started:8pm-End:9:50pm
at my bunk down yonder
(This is what happens when you read The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger in one sitting three hours before lunch at McDonalds on Holy Thursday. It was not so much of a sacrifice to defer ordering chicken fillet in three hours because it was written in breeze. I was down to my last page without anticipation. If I didn’t see anything coming at all, it must be darn good. No. Brilliant,like that thing someone did I didn’t see coming, but that is another story.)

I was reading Womenagerie by Jessica Zafra(JZ)when I heard a dainty thud just overhead where I was lyind down. I tried to ignore it twice, but it was incessant. Thump, thump, thump. Blagh! I knew I had to get up and find out who had the gall to interrupt me at the highlight of JZ’s punchline. Sure enough, I have read the book, for what, like four times and I still find myself engrossed with it everytime. With a good read like that in your hand, it sure was a pain in the gut to get up.
So, I peeled myself off heavily from my bunk and from my towering position, it wasn’t difficult to see who the intruder was. A tiny little mouse was trapped inside my pail. How cute. JZ had an airplane stopped at six months. A prudish teething vermin had me put down her book.

For a split second, I was baffling whether to dispose it for good, or let it loose. I can’t remember distinctly why I was so stalled at that moment. I am pretty sure it wasn’t because I pitied the poor thing. I just wanted to do things a little differently at that time, I guess. If it was another time, I would have killed it right on with anything on my hand. I am not your average crying baby damsel in distress. My toughness and capacity to fight head on are directly proportional to distress. I do my crying in private. I have always learned to fend for myself ever since I could remember. Maybe, because I am the eldest among the brood of four. I learned to look after my younger siblings practically right after I made that first small-step-of-a-baby-one-big-leap-for-younger-siblings kind of thing. I was born to a bourgeoise life. A bourgeoise life I have led since then. I don’t get easily intimidated by roaches, lizards and other household insects; much more a tiny, helpless vermin.

I was thinking what good would it do if I helped it out from its prison and let it run a ratty life. I thought it would only scrounge up garbage piles all over the place and sneak up on our food. Sometimes, rats can get pretty nasty and vengeful. They eat up your clothes.

I looked at it again, and I swear it looked back at me. It felt like eternity, and I just knew we had said about so much to each other. I can’t forget those two tiny marble-clear eyes. They spoke to me. It was like that phony mercenary hit-cat Puss In Boots that had asthma in Shrek2, with all two front paws clasped together begging desperately for mercy. I felt like God.

Except for occasional mishievous tip-toeing when the coast was clear and running like that of an escaping thief in the night, its existence didn’t hurt me much at all. It only managed to munch up on my Skyflakes and Chippy on two occasions. Other than that, it had been a fairly considerate roommae not to mess up with my stuff, especially my clothes. We were both being territorial and prudent to not encroach each other’s space. His was a crude hole a few centimeters away from my bunk. We were not friends, but I don’t think we were enemies, either. It had probably seen go about my life. It had probably snuck up its stinking nose on me during my private moments. It probably saw me cry, sleep, smile, read, write, curse and cry. It saw more of myself than anyone else did in the world.

I didn’t have much of a choice then, if you ask me. Or maybe, they were not just the alternatives I would have wanted to choose from. I didn’t see it fit to live, but I didn’t want to be the one to end its life. I tell you, I wish I had not been the one to see it trapped in my pail. I wish it had been somebody else’s pail in another room that it would not have had to be me. I pitied it later, but it was not the reason why I didn’t want to smack up its head in the first place. I just wanted to react to an all-familiar stimulus in a different manner.

They were all at the right time and place, the mouse, the red pail, the room and the book. I was the only one who was not. I think for two nights, it stayed there lonley, desperate and tired sticking its lungs out for the world to see. But the world is deaf, especially to some insignificant rat. Nobody needs a rat, so I lay my stinking guts out for two nights for every thud it made as it jumped up and down in frustration trying to get the hell out of the pail. I think it knew better than I did that it was doomed to perdition.

It died on the third day. I turned the pail over and its carcass fell right into the yellow sack where the caretaker places the garbage. Schindler saved thousands of Jews without meaning to and was commended for it. I let a rodent die without meaning to and was reproached.