Today afternoon I thought I'd rest for a while since I had the day off and didn't have much to do. As I lay in bed I could hear my parents discussing about ways to kill the rat which ran into our house yesterday. Yes, I know that sounds like we have a dirty house, but no, its just because our yard is overgrown and the door was open. It ran and hid in a room and we've kept the room locked since yesterday. Apparently there is a thing called 'Rat Glue'. I don't know if it has existed for a long time, I heard about it today. If you don't know how it works, here it is:
It is a sticky sheet that is kept and something to lure the rat is kept on it. When the rat steps on it, it gets stuck and will scream and screech and we are to take it out and leave it to die screaming or kill it!
I had somehow convinced myself to allow my parents to poison the rat. There seemed no other way to drive it out. (this is at least the less gruesome alternative I feel... the rat hopefully won't have a painful, long drawn out death) But the rat had developed immunity against the poison and had already eaten it twice since yesterday and was still alive. So, they were considering the option of buying the rat glue. Disturbed by this, I got up and protested and finally convinced them against it. We have to come up with another way to drive it out.
But this got me thinking about how ethical killing the rat is. I don't want to kill it... but we can't live with it in the house!
Just last week there was a news report about a man-eater tiger that was causing havoc in a village close to my city. The villagers were demanding that the tiger had to be put down. It is a valid demand. The people were scared to step out of their houses and kids in the village had stopped going to school. But the tiger knew no better! We keep destroying its habitat and taking away its food. Should it be killed for trying to live? The tiger killed to fill its stomach. Humans kill animals and throw away tons of food as waste.
How can we justify taking the life of an animal just to be discarded? I hope we can do something to better this situation. :(
It is a sticky sheet that is kept and something to lure the rat is kept on it. When the rat steps on it, it gets stuck and will scream and screech and we are to take it out and leave it to die screaming or kill it!
I had somehow convinced myself to allow my parents to poison the rat. There seemed no other way to drive it out. (this is at least the less gruesome alternative I feel... the rat hopefully won't have a painful, long drawn out death) But the rat had developed immunity against the poison and had already eaten it twice since yesterday and was still alive. So, they were considering the option of buying the rat glue. Disturbed by this, I got up and protested and finally convinced them against it. We have to come up with another way to drive it out.
But this got me thinking about how ethical killing the rat is. I don't want to kill it... but we can't live with it in the house!
Just last week there was a news report about a man-eater tiger that was causing havoc in a village close to my city. The villagers were demanding that the tiger had to be put down. It is a valid demand. The people were scared to step out of their houses and kids in the village had stopped going to school. But the tiger knew no better! We keep destroying its habitat and taking away its food. Should it be killed for trying to live? The tiger killed to fill its stomach. Humans kill animals and throw away tons of food as waste.
How can we justify taking the life of an animal just to be discarded? I hope we can do something to better this situation. :(
P.S. I wrote this post about a week back but didn't want to post it during new year as it was a little sad.
UPDATE: We didn't have to kill the rat after all! It started scratching the door, we made a path for it to run out and opened the door. It ran straight out! :)
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