A 5 Meter Distance of Toleration

 I saw my Dad behead a duck once. Saw the blood come oozing out like a thin thread. Red. I could never eat duck without the image playing around in my head. The dark eyes; calm, almost as if it knew it was time to go. Didn't make a noise. I couldn't go into my Dad's poultry farm. The way they stood in a 10-inch metal cage and collapsed when they no longer could, scared me.

I was the one who caught the vigova ducks for the people who came to buy them off. They ran for their lives, as they should. I couldn't let them be. I had to catch them, so my old Dad doesn't have to chase behind them ! They cried and I gave them a final friendly pat on the head and gave them away. They must've hated me for the betrayal.

Years later I saw my Dad and my brother kill a rat. Filled a tub with water and drowned the animal. Its last minutes of breathlessness haunted me for days. Reminded me of my aunt and her one-year-old drowning when the train hit the waters back in 1988. They all felt the same terror, probably.

I couldn't watch it. Yet I did. Like it was on me. The blood was on my hands too.

I do eat meat a lot. I enjoy eating meat. It's healthy and inevitable! But lately, I feel haunted. I stopped killing the spiders that evade my room. I stopped crushing cockroaches that leech into my cupboards.

I make up a rule with the spiders in my toilet- "Keep a 5-meter distance at all times, and we'll go by. I won't kill you. I won't tell my dad on you; as long as you keep your distance"

And they do!

I don't intervene into their web of lives. They trap a fly, and I don't help the fly let free.. That's the natural way of things, I suppose.

Or was it Murphy's Law?

I'm not quite sure.

I'm still terrified of rats, and I may tolerate mice. But God-forbid, I kill them.

They don't have to die for my fear.

That's on me.

Their pain, no less than mine. A life is a life!