Drowned rat

I speak literally. One sunny day, I saw Emily sniffing persistently around the pool, which is more like a three-foot deep square bucket with a stick in the middle out of which the water is supposed to fountain if the motor worked. I keep a board over it during the rainy season from October through June. This year we had almost no rain during May, the drought having crept up from California.

with board part-way over

 Thinking I'd got lucky and some frogs had moved in, I lifted the board. The rainwater was within a few inches of the top. No frogs. Just a long, dark thing paddling barely above the water. Emily extended her nose. I pulled her head back and let the board fall.

Without board after I bailed it out. Yes the person who built this was stupid enough to put it right up against the base of a tree, forgetting that trees, like children, grow.

What to do? The rat was clearly exhausted and suffering. I feel guilty when killing slugs--though I do kill them. Once in the past I killed a rat by smashing its head with a brick, the only weapon to hand. Never want to do that again.

Terrier= vermin weapon! Clearly Emily is more interested in hunting than Miro. Maybe she's like Keeper who cheerfully and quickly killed any varmint she could catch.

I lifted the rat out of the water with the pooper-scooper. It lay on the concrete looking pathetic, too exhausted to move. A person with sense would have left it in the water until fate and bad luck did their thing.

But no quick neck-break here. Emily wanted to play. She sniffed. She poked. She lifted it and dropped it. I dithered. I swore at the dog and the rat.

And then I cursed myself for the worst idiot of all three as I picked the rat up again in the scooper and carried it out to the forested area at the front right side of my property and flung it into the bushes where it landed softly amid the salmon berries and evergreen needles. I imagined all the happy little rats whose futures I had now enabled.

Where'd it go?

Guess I'll just graze on blossoms instead.