Moral Dilemmas

I am stuck in a moral dilemma. A few days ago there was a mouse in my house. She was a very cute little thing, and I did not want to kill her (I’ve decided to call the mouse a her based on the title of the book Of Mice and Men. It suggests that mice and men are two separate things, therefore we can assume, based solely on this book title, that there are no male mice. If it was called Of Mice are Men obviously I would call her a him). I spent a few days devising ways to trap the mouse without hurting it so that I could release it in the wild, but eventually just caught it eating the crumbs in my toaster. I put it in a wooden box which it quickly escaped from, then caught it in a canvas bag and before it could chew through, transferred it to a bucket with a Frisbee for a lid, and a gardening book for weight (thanks Gina). I named her Minnie, after the rodent-looking actress of the same name, and drove her far away. I released her in the woods where she could frolic free of Man’s murderous ways, or be eaten by a barn owl. Either way my conscience is clear.

Today I was working on my idiosyncratic sewer. There is something wrong between the toilet and the tank. For some reason the poops do not want to go where they should. I started at the way station beside the house, took apart the box surrounding it, and that is when I discovered the bumblebee nest. It must have been a ridiculous sight to see, me still hobbled from my brush with death, scrambling up a prickle covered embankment with a swarm of bumblebees in lazy pursuit. When I got to the top I looked back to see them merely flying around in circles, as if unsure what to do. Bumblebees are definitely the morons of the Apoidea superfamily.

(On a sidenote, it occurred to me that I didn’t even know if bumblebees could sting, which added an element of ridiculousness to my panicked escape. I even came inside to look it up on the internet and was relieved to find that they do in fact sting. I also learned that they have barbless stings ((and that their stingers are actually called stings)), which means they can sting more than once. Turns out it was prudent to throw caution to the wind. Just try laughing at me now.)

This brings me to my dilemma. I have to fix the sewer, but how do I do that with a colony of bees flying around with nature’s automatic weapon sticking out of their asses? The easy answer is nuke the colony. In the grand scheme of things, what is one less colony of bumblebees? Sure, they bumble, but what good is that doing me? Then I remembered that cute little mouse. I went to all that effort to not kill one living thing (and let’s face it, what’s one less mouse?), so how can I, only days later, destroy an entire civilization, to put it melodramatically, just so I can take a poop (which by the way I have been holding for two days). It seems very wrong to me. I suppose I could fashion a beekeeper’s suit from a few pairs of old coveralls and snowboarding gear, but if they get in somehow I’ll essentially be wearing a suit made of bees, like those gloves they make in South America with the bullet ants woven right in. I do not relish the thought of scrambling up that bank, while desperately stripping my clothes off, and being stung repeatedly by a moronic swarm of tiny flying cows. I would surely win a Darwin award if that were to happen.

In a bitter twist of irony (it always is bitter, isn’t it?), not killing that mouse to keep a clear conscience has put me in a situation where I can’t kill a society of bees with a clear conscience. If only I could go back and kill that mouse. I hate irony. What to do…

I’m going to think on this while I mow the lawns, after I go to the neighbor’s to poop. Any suggestions would be quite welcome. I didn’t get any suggestions on The Great Walnut Tree War by the way, http://runawaytypewriter.blogspot.com/2007/05/great-walnut-tree-war.html, and my tree is still dying of insects and birds, while looking like an arboreal fairy. Where are you people when I need you?