26.8.23
When to take a life?
A high pitched eeeeee - pulses in and out of our strained aural range. The
relax into that sweet, dark cocoon of sleep forever disturbed. This sound is
enough to create the heart of a mad murderer or a desperate sheet tent builder
in us all. When eating marmite, icepacks and bugoff just don’t work; death is
the only alternative.
One early morning at school in ’94, a hoard of cockroaches, distracted
by my footsteps (from their feasting on what may have been a devon sandwich
poked into a crack of a retaining wall) spilled across the veranda like a
tsunami. The faster, lighter ones crawling over the top of the larger ones,
forming crests, until they dropped off down cracks behind a planter box full of
flowering murraya. Despite my armful of marking, my immediate reaction was to
kill. No Spanish flamenco dancer could have pounded with more passion than I
did in that moment. Remorse however rose in my throat when I looked down beyond
my box of books, and saw my kill. A giant, flat roach at the climax of a white
gut rainbow. A flash of 6th Form biology, re spiracles in
exoskeletons, forced up bile to meet the remorse.
Do carrots scream as they are pulled from the ground before they seed?
Is pest spraying a persuasion against redback invasion?
Are abattoirs – humane?
Is euthanasia kind?
M and I brace ourselves for the kindness we will be asked to deliver in
the next few days. Everything is tight and blurry at the same time. Our
precious, best boy, groans to find a comfy position from the lymphoma racking
his corn chip smelling, bean shaped, sleep curl. The question is when. When do
we help him into that sweet; dark cocoon of sleep?
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