On Rats and Ahimsa

So the other night I woke up to noise coming from down stairs.  I got up, went downstairs and crept through the living room.  I could hear rustling behind some boxes (we are moving) in the dining room.  I grabbed a broom, and went over to the boxes.  The noise stopped.  Using the broom I pushed the boxes to the side when suddenly a rat jumped out and ran right at me.  I hit it with the broom twice, and it ran off to the the side.  Somehow I had ended up in the kitchen defending the rat hole with the broom.  The rat tried to run into the kitchen but I again landed the broom on it.  It flew off to the side and ducked behind the stove.  I pulled the stove away from the wall, but the rat wasn't there.  I looked under the stove, but it wasn't there... Then I heard it.  the rat had crawled up inside the stove.  I pulled the bottom drawer out of the stove and low and behold I could see the rats tail hanging
down.  "Scissors" I though, but luckily I couldn't find any.  I found a kitchen knife though.  With out
thinking I tried to stab the knife up into the oven.  My heart was racing.  The rat climbed higher up, out of view.  I set the oven to bake.... 475.  I grabbed the broom sat down and waited.

As I waited, suddenly I became aware of what I was doing.  I had gone from asleep to adrenaline in mere minutes and hadn't even questioned weather this was how I wanted to deal with the rat.  I imagined in about 30 minutes the smell of burnt rat wafting upstairs to my sleeping family.  I remembered my intention to practice ahimsa or non-violence.  I turned the oven off.  Shut off the light and went back to bed.

I am undecided about the practice of killing rats.  If we were going to continue living in this house (which we are not) I would want the rats out.  When we first moved in I had used a trap and terminated a rat which had been destroying the fruit we left out to ripen on the counter.  I had also bought poison and put it in the basement.  The next day I had gone down to find a mother mouse with 4 baby mice suckling her.  She lay dead in the middle of the basement floor and the babies still alive, but with eyes not yet open held her dead body.  This was heartbreaking for me, as my own son lay in his mothers arms upstairs nursing at that very moment.  I briefly considered raising the mice myself.  Giving them milk and then releasing them into the wild.... then I realized I was being foolish.

Rats are an interesting companion species for humans.  I find I have a primal fear of them running around near my feet.  When I think about the place they may have occupied in the ancient world this becomes more clear.  If I slept on straw spread on the floor, and a rat had burrowed into my bed I would feel very invaded.  If I lived in a one room hut made to protect me from the harsh winter elements and a sneaky rat lingered in the walls I would feel violated.   As it is the rats seem to come seasonally to this 100 year old house in NC.  They were here when we moved in in the spring, but were kind enough to disappear all summer.  Now as the weather is getting cold they are back. 

One thing I am sure of though.  I will not use poison to kill rats or mice again.  I realized as I disposed of the body of the dead mouse that the poison it had eaten was now in its body, and would end up in a land fill, ad slowly over time work its way into the ground water.  I realized that by buying poison I was supporting companies that create poison, not by the package, but by the tanker full. 

I sense that as a yogi, my highest expression is to find a non-violent solution to the rats.  that is not to say, live with them, but to change my situation so they no longer are part of my experience.  And then if they are, to accept that experience as the gift, remembering the divine origin of all of this.