Death is never a small thing

I could feel the violence, right to my core.

I’d pulled a tick off my “tick-magnet,” Belle.  It was just strolling atop her minklike coat. I’d been cleaning my glasses, already had a tissue in my hand, so pulled it off with that. Its tiny legs quested. I folded the tissue and squished it.

Hard. Because I know ticks are really difficult to squish.  I pressed even harder as I walked into the bathroom.  I wanted it truly dead, not just wounded — and then, as I flushed it, have it suffer being drowned.

Does this sound funny to you? I mean, not like a clown — but ridiculous-funny?

I know it was a tick — an arachnid and a vector of disease.  And, — bottom line — it was posing a threat to my dog. But it was a life.

I ended it.

One minute it was blithely walking around, perhaps preparing for a bite to eat. (Just following nature’s course for it) . The next minute, it’s entire world is a miasma of pain and violence.

I could not not think that.  Feel that, rather. A roil of nightmare.

So I wrote it down. Maybe it’ll help me not think.

Or maybe I’ll think more.