Identity

Sorry kids, no fiction today.

I am a vegan.
I am pansexual.
I am American.
I am a human.
I am a red wolf.
I am mentally ill.
I am a fish keeper.
I am straight edge.
I am a woman.
I am a writer.

Bullshit. Identity does not come down to labels.

This is what I am:

I live with over a dozen snakes, and like myself and other captives, they require nourishment. This nourishment comes in the form of rodents, which I raise in large gray plastic bins in a rack in my basement. I care for them daily, give them paper towel rolls and little toys so they do not grow bored, and periodically gass them to death with CO2 before feeding them to hungry constrictors.

This morning, an older mouse who is "spent" in terms of litter productivity - which is a way I hate to think of any animal - was ill. She developed a neurological condition which I believe to be so because "I am a wildlife rehabilitator" and know enough about animal medicine to confirm that this isn't the result of a simple ear infection. The constant twitch and bob of her head has caused her to be out-competed by her healthier cagemates for food and water, and I found her thin and pathetic in her nest this morning.

I put the frail mouse down my shirt, where I could feel her shiver against my flesh, to keep her warm. Her whiskers tickled my skin as I prepared a hot meal of kitten milk replacer and oatmeal - protocol for a thin, sick mouse for those of you inexperienced in rodent triage. I balled up one of my cowprint bandanas in a small plastic carrier, placed her inside, then brought her tiny muzzle to the edge of a bottle cap filled with the mixture. She ate heartily before curling up and falling to sleep.

I then walked into the kitchen and began thawing one of the baby mice I have in my freezer so that I could feed a gray rat snake hatchling. As it thawed, I went downstairs to set up a nice cage with a hiding box filled with fleece bedding for the sick old mouse to spend her last days in. Then I came back upstairs, gently placed my skinny, wobbling charge in her "hospice" quarters, then picked up the pinky mouse on a pair of tongs and wiggled it in front of the young snake until he struck and consumed it.

This is Me.