ok so techinically west yellowstone is in Montana…

We stayed at the closest place you could get to Yellowstone without actually being in Yellowstone—a wide, open field carpeted with sagebrush and dry shrubs, dotted with trucks, campers, and more mosquitoes than grains of sand on a beach.  It was under the pale glow of a full moon that we caught the final mouse of the family. We heard the trap snap through the stillness of the night—loud and decisive. Naked and half-asleep, I stumbled out of bed to check on the little bastard.

Naturally, it had happened right beneath Nicole’s head.

I clicked on my headlamp and knelt down. The trap hadn’t killed him. It had only crushed his hind legs. He was dragging himself forward with his tiny elbows, the trap clattering behind him like a bloated diaper weighed down with the shit of an entire lifetime. It was grotesque. Pitiful. Weirdly noble.  I picked him up gently, careful not to startle him more than he already was, and carried him into the shrubs. Still naked, I squatted on my heels, only to feel a few stems of grass tickle my asshole, sent me shooting upright like I’d been hit with a cattle prod. My heart raced. I cursed softly. Then I crouched again, slower this time, more aware.  And there, in the stillness, I pried open the trap.

I could’ve ended it. Snapped his neck and saved him the crawl. But I didn’t. I watched him pull himself, inch by inch, into the brush.  Even a maimed mouse deserves a shot at its own ending.