The Souls of Small Creatures by Logan Janssen

It is quiet and cold, you can feel the darkness pressing you from all sides. Your heart is beating in a fast, irregular manner, you can feel eyes boring into you from heights you cannot fathom. Your grey fur is wet from the rain shower not minutes before, and you can feel your hunger carving a hole in your belly. Poor little mouse, there is no hope for you now. You rub your tiny paws together to try to conserve warmth. In the luminous green grass of summer, the home where you made your burrow is now filled with bricks and cement. You think back to the times when there was a surplus of seeds to eat, when you were always full. Now, there are barely any of those plants left, and you are left starving.

There is still hope! There in the distance, too far to make out, is the smell of warmth and food. If you squint your eyes, maybe you can see the outline of a structure, inviting beams of light luring you to safety. You make a beeline, and once you are inside, you are greeted with an infinite amount of crumbs, ready for the taking. You stuff your face full before exploring some more. Remember, mice can only see about 3 feet ahead of them, so you have no idea where you are. You find a little hole in the wall, outlined with the daintiest scratch marks. Once you are inside, the warmth fills you, and your fur begins to dry into a soft, grey ball. This is much better, isn't it? You are not afraid. You are not cold, or wet, or hungry. You want to see more of this haven, more of the sanctuary you have miraculously found yourself in. Do you hear the noise? There must be others here. You run, you do not know where you are. All of a sudden, there is a loud, piercing screech. It sounds like an owl! You'd better hide. But suddenly, there are more walls than you first thought; you are caught in a corner. There is no grass to lie in, no bush to protect you from the sky. The sky, the sky... Now there is only grey concrete, and a tree? No! A broom! It is falling on you, and there is nowhere to run.

You realise it is a kinder place outside, because at least your limp body will fall to the earth, and you will be enwrapped in blankets of leaves and flowers. In the concrete box, you die alone, in confusion and fear, where there is no mother earth to comfort you.

As a human being, you might be afraid of mice. Or spiders. Or bugs. Or birds. You might find them dirty, contaminated, or just plain scary. I know you’ve heard this before, but how do you think we look to them? Wielding a weapon they can't even begin to describe, to imagine, to even comprehend. Mice are small creatures, they do not understand that they are scary to you. They do not come into your house to rob you of your food, to wake you in the night with their pattering footsteps, or to give you diseases. They are living beings. They want just what we want. To be warm. To be fed. To be dry and to be safe. They do not realise that they are trespassing on your property. 

What do you gain from killing these little animals? They are gone. Yes, that must be good for you.

What about the spider in the corner of your bedroom?

Did he bite you while you were asleep? Did he do anything to scare you? What if you put down the slipper, carelessly torn off your foot in fear to defend yourself, and take a look at what the spider is doing? Focus. Is he moving around? How? Do you see the nearly invisible tendrils of his web that catch sunlight in certain places and disperse rainbows across their silky surface?

How can you take a life you know so little about? Just because it's easy doesn’t mean you should.

If you kill a stranger, is it no longer a crime? Or is it immoral just because they look, eat, sleep, and work just like you?

They say these things do not matter, that they don't feel pain or remember things like we do. Do you remember learning how to breathe? No. But you do it anyway. Maybe they don’t remember how it felt to live under the ground in the fields, but memories do not quantify the value of a life.

So the next time you are setting up a vicious mousetrap or reaching for the bug spray, why don't you try picking up tools of kindness instead? A cup and a piece of paper, a box with a trapdoor lid. Does it not feel like your duty to be a protector?

And so, the next time you find yourself in a foreign place, with new smells and sounds, and you are scared, I hope your hosts greet you with compassion.