When the hospital send out your appointment times, can’t they chuck a specimen jar in the post too?

There’s nothing like milling around your house looking for something you can wee in.

Not to mention carrying piddle around town with you too.

�
I was looking over the plants in my concrete matchbox yard whilst sipping a not-quite-hung-over coffee. They’ve all been looking a bit defeated since the weather changed. I noticed that there were still two sweetpeas in bloom. One had a kinked stem though it still looked fat and lovely and hadn’t yet started to wilt.
�
Beneath them was yet another mouse.
�
“Naw” I cooed “it looks like its sleeping”
�
It had to have happened over night. I dread scooping up their tiny corpses, so I decided to finish my coffee before handling its little stiff body.
�
I plucked the dead sweetpea that looked alive and put it on the mouse. Both a purple reminder as well as a small hopeful hint that I’d love it if my boy handled the whole thing for me.
�
We traced out footsteps from the night before as I finished my coffee. Looking back over at the mouse, I notice that the dead flower that looked alive was moving gently up and down. And so was the chest of the alive mouse that looked dead.
�
“Just leave it. There’s nothing to do. It’s probably dying of shock” He says. And he’s right.
�
An hour later I peer out the kitchen window. The chest is still fitfully shifting up and down, whilst the front legs jerk as two fat flies crawl over the hind quarters.

I’m reminded of my first cat. Her spine was broken by a dog. When we put her to sleep, she was absolutely fine. Temporarily numbed to pain, but incapable of moving anything past her front legs. She was totally broken, but completely unaware of it.

I start to feel hysterical as I wonder how long it would take a mouse to die of starvation or dehydration or painful shock. I wonder if maggots can get to work on a living thing. Sure, they can.
I panic that those flies, the ones in my yard, are the particularly disgusting ones that deposit live maggots. Not eggs.

Boy says “Here, I’ll go put it in the bins”

I furiously spit that it’ll still suffer in the bins. I angrily stuff my feet into shoes and march outside, seething over the paltry offer of a mere removal.

If you’re going to put a flower pot on a living thing, you want to make sure it’s heavy enough to settle without you needing push down. And yet, you don’t want it to be so heavy that you mis-judge your landing spot.

I heave my blackberries downwards and make a loud awkward noise, so as to not hear any crunch.
Insurance is turning the pot as well. It spun as if on a knob of butter.

Both relieved and irate, I bounded back inside and sobbed like a wrong-done toddler for a minute.

I haven’t moved the pot yet.