I’m skeptical of any religion that proclaims humans are made in God’s image. Surely, if there is a god, she wouldn’t have copied her unnecessary appendix, disease-prone internal organs, or that Tommy John thingy that inevitably tears after a pitcher signs a multi-million dollar contract. And imagine how disappointing heaven would be if God’s closest doppelganger turned out to be Mitch McConnell.
On the other hand, ancient religious texts frequently contain scientific errors. Therefore, I must consider the possibility that rodents, not humans, are the animals most closely resembling God. And if God is a rodent, I’m totally screwed. I know this because despite spending most of my life as an environmental and wildlife advocate, rodents—mice and rats in particular—have gnawed a hole in my resume.
First of all, I have pet snakes, which can only survive by eating mice or rats. There is no vegan alternative for boas!
Second, for years I’ve been at war with the mice in my garage. Initially, I didn’t mind having them around. After all, I live in the country, and the mice were just looking for shelter. Then a family of mice decided to build a nest deep inside the engine of my truck. And since I don’t drive my truck often, they actually took it upon themselves to build a multi-residence condo. Rumor had it that Donald Trump had even secured naming rights to it.
Even that would have been okay, if the mice had the decency to remove their dead. Unfortunately, the smell of their decomposing bodies meant that I couldn’t turn on the heat or air conditioning without gagging. I had to take the truck to a mechanic, who charged me a small fortune to take the engine apart and tear down the little Trumpy condos.
Then, to keep the mice from coming back like another Obamacare repeal attempt, I had no choice but to evict the mice from my garage. First I tried a live trap, but the mice excelled at sneaking in, stealing the bait, and escaping. Essentially the live trap became an elaborate mouse feeder. Commercial poisons were out of the question, as owls, foxes, coyotes, and wolves live on my property, and I couldn’t risk hurting them with a contaminated mouse. That left me with traditional spring traps.
Over the past year or so, I have killed hundreds of mice in my garage with the traps—feeling terrible every time I did it. I also worried about catching hantavirus from handling my quarry.
Finally, in desperation, I plunked down thirty dollars for an ultrasonic pest repeller. According to the manufacturer, all I had to do was plug the contraption into an electrical outlet, and it would chase rodents away with a sound inaudible to humans and non-rodent pets. I immediately had flashbacks to my childhood, when I blew my allowance on sea monkeys and X-ray glasses. Oh, the disappointment, for an eight-year old boy or an adult Donald Trump, when he realizes that X-ray glasses won’t actually let him see through a young girl’s blouse! I braced myself for the inevitable scam.
Well, guess what? The ultrasonic pest repeller actually worked. I used to catch mice every night. Now the traps have been untouched for three weeks. Soon I will retire the traps, get down on my knees, and beg for forgiveness from the Great Rodent God in the Sky. She has to forgive me. Doesn’t she? Oh, wait, now all those poor mice will be forced to spend their winters outside, in the woods.
I’m totally screwed.