To kill or not to kill, that was the question.

On my way about campus I spotted an unusual beast. I was moving past the Stevens Building when I saw a balled up rat. It was black and white in a ball laying by the sidewalk. I thought it was dead on my way through.

I returned about an hour later to find the rat still there and I took a closer look. To my surprise, and utter elation, it moved. This was an indication the rat was not dead. However, I was about a foot or two away from the little monster, and it was not afraid. This began to worry me, as I wondered if it was injured or dying. I considered going to a local restaurant and asking for some lettuce to try to feed the rat, calling some sort of wildlife action coalition or trying to move it to a nicer location. I walked off to get the lettuce, thinking it the best plan of action, but I was distracted by a sign in a window and told myself it was just a rat.

Rats are small disease factories. I don’t know what I was thinking trying to save this mutant plague-bearing, cheese-eater. I could have put myself, which is far more important than any rat, in grave danger by helping this thing.

Some would consider my action to be a heinous, inhumane thing by leaving a rat to possibly die on the side of the road. However, the humane thing to do in this situation would have been to jump up and land on its head, ending its suffering with a crunch and splat. The idea that animals suffer is inhumane, but killing them is not.

I had no anesthetic with me, nor did I have a tiny rat gun in which to shoot it dead. My bag was not filled with a rat-sized gas chamber or the materials for a lethal injection. No, I did not have to administer the lethal injection at this point – God already did. God shot it with enough death serum to leave it twitching for possibly a few days. God is inhumane.

I mean, I’ve seen unattractive rats in my day, we all have. I recall watching the “Secret of NIMH” and being afraid for a long period of time because the rats were so evil. This rat was not an evil rat. It looked nice, like it needed a home, but instead it was potentially doomed to suffer.

Again, I am not sure what I was thinking. This rat could have bit me. Beyond the diseases I could have contracted, like the Black Plague, I could have been wounded so deeply as to need medical attention. Were this to happen, there is the financial devastation that is to follow, with the cost of gas as well as stitches, I could have been in the poor house for possibly helping a death row rat.

Perhaps the best thing I could have done would have been to leave the items from the game of Clue so the rat could choose, if it wanted to kill itself with one of them. If I were the rat, I would have gone with the knife, all Elliott Smith style.

Views expressed in this humor column every three weeks do not necessarily reflect the Northern Star or its staff. Send questions or comments to [email protected].