Is killing a small mouse morally wrong?

:( I wouldn’t have killed him. I’d have taken him away from the house and let him go.

@Hain_roo EXACTLY. I suggested that. They said it’s going to come back again. It really hurts me seeing it scared to death, especially when he’s being surrounded by people.

No. If they caught him they should’ve, just let him go free out doors. Most field mice don’t like to stay indoors if there is nothing to entice it. Plenty of things for it to eat outside.

I guess they weren’t aware they could have let it go, or they’re sick bastards for drowning it. But mice die all the time for research, so it’s not the end of the world.

@Blackberry It is, to me. Why is it not okay to kill humans for research then? I wouldn’t mind, if that’s the case.

I think it would have been morally wrong if they tortured the mouse and forced it to suffer. If the death was swift and as painless as possible, they were just doing what they thought was for the best because of health and sanitation reasons.

Drowning is the typical way farm people in my area deal with rats and mice. My grandparents drown the rats and mice they find.

It probably was pointless to kill the mouse. There are probably dozens of others around.

@Blackberry True but its a cruel way to kill any animal. I know they carry diseases but that just seems more cruel than posion or a mouse trap that is at least quick. Although your right. Lab rats sometimes have worst fates, but at least their deaths are usually for the contribution of mans well being. So to me its equal to killing a cow or pig or chicken. At least there is a purpose. Drowning it for no reason, other than to get rid of it, just feels wrong. They could’ve driven it several miles away and left it in a field. Its not like a dog where it will try to find its owner.

@Pandora Exactly, once it has been caught I’m pretty sure it’ll never come back.

I see, I didn’t know drowning was a regular occurence on farms and such. It makes sense that would be the easiest way to kill them, as there are no mini euthanization kits.

If I caught it live I couldn’t kill it.

I don’t think the mouse’s size has anything to do with its killing being moraly right or wrong.

I don’t kill mice, but I will kill rats. The problem with gnawing rodents is that they breed like… well, mice and rats and can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to houses. They cause fire hazards because they don’t care what they chew on. Yum yum, electrical wire.

If you find one mouse or one rat, you know there are at least 10 more where that came from. Diseases are one thing, property damage is another. They die and decay in the walls, they poo and pee everywhere and they chew chew chew on everything.

If it was in my house and there was no where I could take it, I am afraid it would meet death. Living where I am now, we have a lovely woods and I would go bring the mouse up there, but not a rat. Rats gotta die in the city I live. No snakes or enough prey animals to keep their numbers down and far too much trash for them.

To you and to me too it was morally wrong, to the killer it obviously was not.
So, I guess it is personal.
I can feel your discomfort, you having witnessed it.
Even if I am bothered by an annoying fly or wasp I catch it with a glass and a postcard and put it outside, as I can not willingly kill an animal.
I am a hypocrite, by the way, because I like my steaks and they didn’t live and die in freedom (most of them)....

Mice were a big problem many decades ago in a time when sophisticated food wrapping wasn’t commonplace. People could starve because of a serious mouse problem. Today it’s different. Therefore whenever we find a mouse in our house we take it outside away from our house and set it free.

Oh, as an aside, when I lived in the States, we had a ground squirrel problem in our yard when I was a kid. I had to help my dad flood them out and they would end up being chased by the water, up into an upended jar of water. Of course it is very very sad to see this, but for us, we were solving a problem we had. I also grew up in a house full of hunters. Mom regularly fixed a good rabbit stew and I would watch as she dressed them. I can still remember the smell. She kept a large garden in the back yard and we would set traps for rabbits there. We hated it when they ate the beans as they were just sprouting and felt justified. ‘They brought it upon themselves’, my mother would say, as she ripped their skins off. Small game season was interesting. Dad would come home with a few birds of different types and some rabbits, hares. Nothing endangered. Nothing rare. Just the usual flora and fauna of the area that were over populated due to the lack of coyotes and wolves.

The mouse will come back! My neighbor has traps on the thrid floor of his old farm house. He traps and releases and noticed that the mice seemed to be faster at getting out of the cage when he let them go. He starred putting a stripe of nail polish on their fur to see if they came back. He would let them go in the park 1500 ft from his house. Sure enough, the mouse would be back in the trap in 2 days. One mouse he caought 5 times! He named him Boomer, short for “boomerang”. Now he drives at least two miles away and lets ithem go on the other side of the creek.

I relocate them to a “higher plane” with the standard Victor Mouse Traps. The last thought in their brain is: “Oooo this sunflower seed is delici——”.

Active killing or passive killing?

I wouldn’t go and hit it over the head with a hammer. But i have a couple of moustraps in the attic and in the basement if my house, and if the mouse gets caught in one of those, I won’t shed any tears.

@Pandora Yeah, this reminds me of the squirrel question: Rodents are so cute and cuddely, but also can do damage to property. It’s a lose-lose situation, and I would rather kill a family of mice than pay thousands in damages. :(

@Luiveton Well, since humans are doing the research, we’ve decided it’s unethical ourselves lol.

Did you know that rats can’t vomit? That is why they have been able to adapt to poisons. Just another useless rodent fact from me.

In my defence, we support several families of mice at our cabin and I have not laid ONE trap up there. (actually, I lie. I don’t set traps because I know there is a family or two of Arctic fox up there that need the food source…. see… I am thinking of nature, but I’m just so damn pragmatic.)

@cazzie – if Trivial Pursuit were still a popular game, you can be sure that I would now be able to answer the question: “Can rats vomit?”

You’re not wrong. That sort of compassion is, in my humble opinion, a gift from God, and is to be nurtured and exercised. There are far too many people in the world with hard hearts and almost no compassion.

What you’re experiencing is, I think, the very basis of all morality: we have a native sensitivity to the suffering of others and want to avoid it when possible. This sensitivity—compassion—is fragile, though. It vanishes when fear or anger enters the picture, and it gets worn down when we continually ignore it.

If you were, like my mother, deathly afraid of mice, you wouldn’t be feeling this compassion. Likewise, the more you act on the premise that nuisance animals don’t deserve to live, the less sensitive you’ll become to that mouse’s well-being.

To me, morality boils down to keeping one’s sense of compassion alive. That means not letting fear and anger get in its way, and not dulling it by continually ignoring it. The more you honor the voice of your compassion, the more exquisitely alive it becomes.

Mice do come back, by the way, if they’re released anywhere near their home. I’ve resorted to driving them half a mile away, and across a river.

@Luiveton Relocating only moves the problem to someone else.

Are you going to volunteer to remove all the mouse droppings and clean all the kitchen drawers and cupboards. Will you wash the silverware and wash any clothes where they have made nests? Will you replace the refrigerator electric cord they chewed through? Will you fix the dryer vent they chewed through to get into the basement?
It is easy to take the moral high road when someone else is taking care of the low.
Sometimes we just have to do what needs to be done.

Is it morally wrong to kill an animal in self defense? No, and that is exactly what one is doing with removing rodents from your living space.

Is it morally wrong to capture an animal and then torture it to death by drowning? Perhaps.

Why the neck didn’t they just use one of those quick and easy snap traps. No muss and no fuss. Just “snap” and the end result is a a quick and relatively pain free death for the critter.

P.S. mice are not an endangered species…

As @LuckyGuy said, they can cause a lot of damage in a home. How much of your money are you willing to spend to keep a mouse alive? $100? $500? $2,000? or more? A severe rodent infestation can destroy a home.
If a mouse cannot be re-located many miles from any building, then it is best that it is killed as quickly and cleanly as possible. I wouldn’t choose drowning, but I have other means available to me.

The mouse evolutionary strategy is to breed extremely prolifically, so that many mice can be killed and the species will still survive. Such a strategy, as with most strategies, requires a balance, which humans have interrupted. We have tipped the scales in favor of mice by giving them nice warm places to survive through the winter. There are now way more mice, as there are more cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, rats, pigeons and other animals that humans create favorable breeding grounds for than there would be, absent humans.

To me, morality calls for eliminating as many excess mice as possible. I think it is immoral to save mice. It hurts other people by encouraging the spread of disease and filth. It is not even morality when people want to save mice. They are, in fact, giving up their humanity when they fall prey to their unreasoning swoon to cuteness.

That swoon was designed to help us love our babies; however it does spillover and when we see certain physiological shapes, we are often touched. But make no mistake, there is no reason for this so-called “morality.” It is a side-effect of the “morality” that keeps us from killing our babies. Which isn’t morality, either. It’s just built into us via evolution.

What we are talking about is also called “empathy,” as @thorninmud pointed out. But I don’t think we should get very high-minded about it. Like I said, it’s built into it, but it isn’t reasoned. We come along later on, and try to build reason around it—perhaps. Mostly we just throw words like “morality” at it, and make it sound like we are doing something worthy and hope no one will actually think about it.

The best way to get rid of a rodent problem, IMO is using some nonlethal poisons they are making these days. They don’t kill or hurt the rodents, but they wreck their reproductive abilities so they can’t breed. They should die out after the first generation dies of old age. You’re OK until another colony comes by.

Letting them outside is kind of pointless, because they will find their way back inside. I don’t think killing them is immoral, but it’s also pointless because for every mouse or rat you seem there are at least five more you don’t see. Killing one isn’t going to solve any problems.

My grandparents drown mice and rats they personally find and trap on their farm. They have also used something called “Blue Death” which is a very lethal poison. The problem is, it works too fast and the mice and rats quickly figure out not to eat it. They had best luck with the infertility poisons—but they still drown the ones they find. They are grain farmers, so rodents are a serious problem for them.

When I set traps I do not set only one. I put out 16 – 24 snap traps all around the house. I check them every morning and night and immedately set them again if they are sprung.
I go at it hard and fast. I want to wipe out the colony as quickly as possible before the next generation has time to breed – 6 weeks.

@wundayatta I’m not so sure that reason is more fundamentally human than compassion is. Too often, reason just gets used to justify our desire to make things easy on ourselves. Compassion is, by its nature, inconvenient. Compassion puts one out and makes life complicated. I’d say that to be moral requires one to be willing to deal with that complication. In that sense, it strikes me as being quintessentially human.

Taking the life of a rodent is no greater or less then taking the life of another animal to me. And I don’t exactly have a problem with taking life.

My animal empathy is too strong. I have sat with baby mice hoping their mom would come back to them so I could set them all outside at once. It has worked a few times. :)

We have a nice yard. We provide year round birdseed, cat food, water, and ample rodent housing. We keep birdhouses out all year, along with warm bedding they are free to use.

That said, we do have some strong snap traps in our sunporch, attic and basement. We have a brick home. Mice like to walk in from time to time and help themselves to our stuff.

:)One mommy mouse was in a file drawer in my basement with one baby. I was able to get them both into a vase. I took them out and set them up in a squirrel home i had just purchased. When I would go out in the yard, I’d see the mama mouse in the area. It was a nice to see her enjoying her new home

I wouldn’t kill it! That’s horrible! I would simply get a broom and sweep him out of the house, or maybe keep him as a pet.

If you catch one mouse, sure as Bob’s your uncle there are 12 you didn’t catch. Mice come under my animal classification as Varmints. (as opposed to Critters) They are naturally incontinent and leave a stream of urine where ever they go, Rats to the same thing. They must gnaw constantly as do all rodents as their teeth grow continually so they do damage to whatever structure they inhabit and breed as long as there is a food source. Killing the ones in your house won’t hurt the species at all. For some reason, they like the insulation of electrical cabling a lot. It must be satisfying to gnaw on. They sometimes start fires because of that. (not a lot because their little bodies usually ‘zap’ and they are thrown free.) If they get into Silage, Oh my the trouble! That’s why we keep an army of cats to keep the population down.

Killing anything based on ignorance or just because you can is morally wrong.
I rescue mice from my cats all the time, have kept pet Deer mice, and the whole disease thing is way over hyped. A singular mouse is not going to make you sick, they do not incubate the rabies virus and the disease issue for Hanta virus is only when there is a huge concentration of mice and is spread through their droppings. Sooo, unless you have 6 inches of mouse droppings in your house it’s basically a non-issue.

Woodland mice do not live in dense concentrations like house mice can and there is even less of an issue with zoonotic diseases.
Mice are the main food source for many species of mammals, birds & snakes, etc.
“Drowning” is about as classless and cruel as one can get. Bah! Ignorant fools abound.

@majorrich

Mice are not “naturally incontinent” they leave urine markers like many species including cats to designate habitually used trails, and as scent markers for other mice and sexual/territorial messages. They are opportunists just trying to survive like everything else. The diseases rodents carry are based on their populations and environments. Disease is a “natural” means of culling overly dense populations in EVERY species.

City rat populations can carry Hepatitis but…this comes from feeding in contaminated trash sources and sewer trails, sooo, the rats themselves are actually victims of the disease that ALREADY thrives in those conditions.
So are homeless people that are forced to live in unclean surroundings and eat substandard foods. These same rats living in a woodland environment would be feeding on seeds, insects, fruits and pose virtually zero threat of disease.

@Coloma – Incontinent or not, I really don’t want them pissing on the counter where I prepare my food.

@YoBob Neither do I, just sharing some rodent facts, they get far more of a bad rap then they deserve.

@Coloma – Agreed, and I believe this is the case for many “nuisance” animals. However, at the end of the day, one mouse might not be a problem, but they are very prolific breeders and in order to keep that “cute little critter” from blossoming into a full blown infestation (which is a health hazard) the sensible course of action is to remove it.

Sweeping it out the door won’t suffice because it will just come back in, or if not her, one of her 4 gabillion offspring will in a couple of months.

Sure, you can take it to the middle of the woods somewhere, but the harsh realities of nature are it is more likely to become hawk food out there than the mother of a vast colony of mouselings.

Or… you can kill it (I contend in self defense) and realize that nature isn’t like a Bambi movie.

@YoBob Actually, when I have placed mine outdoors, they’ve stayed there.

One trick is to allow other rodents into your yard. If chipmunks or gophers live at the perimeter of your home, mice won’t cross over their territory. ;)

In winter when the larger rodents are hibernating, I try to make the outdoor accomodations mouse friendly.

@YoBob Well sure, obviously if I had a mouse infestation in my house I’d have to call the exterminator, but, my point is, aside from my ramblings, is that my first thought when I see any creature, is that they are simply attempting to survive, in the best way they can, as are we all. My world view always goes to this POV first and foremost. I don’t automatically assume that I have some superior right to life simply because I am a human.
If I was a mouse and found a way into someones house with a nice stash of cat kibble and crumbs under the stove, well….hell yes, I’m movin’ in. lol

I have containers of grain in my garage for my geese and a handful is always scattered on the floor, the sparrows and Juncos and Towhees hop into my garage every morning and feast on the spilled grains. A win/ win…they get fed and I don’t have to sweep. A fine arrangement. As far as mice, well, I have 2 cats so I never have mice in the garage.

I’ve never had mice in my home but if I did I would kill them without hesitation. I think drowning them is cruel though.

I second @Coloma and @SpatzieLover ‘s post. There are species differences and habitat differences. If you truly want to conserve life, where it can be conserved…. abide by the laws of nature. Listen to the nuances and calm sounding rules. Do what simply needs to be done to allow life, or what darkly, calls for death. You don’t want to lose your family to a house fire. Plan accordingly.

@CaptainHarley Aren’t you the guy who has no compunction about killing a __human__ intruder in his house?

It feels a bit squicky and I wouldn’t want to do it but it’s not at the immoral level for me.

My soft heart for little creatures ends at my door. They are out ASAP by any means convenient. Out the door if possible (birds, gophers, moles). Rats are trapped and killed by the poison the firemen give out. Mice are eaten by the cats before we see them. Only the liver is left behind. Bugs are usually swatted and and spiders taken outside, unless they try to get away. I can’t think about it too much or we’d have little graveyards all over the yard.

That’s horrible and tortuous. My personal morals find that repulsive.

No you aren’t wrong. There is a difference between eradicating pests and being deliberate cruelty. Drowning the mouse falls into the latter category to me. I would have put it outside. I have used mouse traps but I am not deliberately cruel to any living creature.

It isn’t wrong. They could have just dropped the mouse outside. Maybe if a mouse is trying to claw my eyes out or go down my mouth I’d kill it. I don’t know nothing bout morality but going out of one’s way to kill a mouse seems pretty cruel. I guess if you have a mouse infestation, then there’s no other solution than to call an exterminator or something…but if it’s just one random mouse, that sucks.
And if killing pests is the only answer, well…if they carry diseases, all the more reason to call a professional exterminator instead of trying to handle it oneself. :/

What they’re doing was morally wrong if your morality includes animals as part of living beings in need of respect. However, I have a cornsnake and I feed him mice weekly. He doesn’t have morality and to him, that’s just food.

I agree that’s different @Simone_De_Beauvoir. Mice are part of a snake’s diet. You aren’t feeding the mice to the snake to be cruel.

I also think using humane (or as humane as possible) methods to eradicate pests is okay. I would not want my house to be overrun by mice and I would use mousetraps to prevent that.

Drowning a mouse? I just don’t get that. That just seems cruel.

[And in my previous post I meant “being deliberately” cruel not cruelty. I hate when I notice these things after the 10 minute rule elapses.]

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I agree with @Bellatrix. Most snake or owl keepers that I know either freeze the mice first, or kill the mouse with a swift blow on its head.

EDIT: Just asked one said snake owner…Buys C O2 killed mice.

Is drowning really cruel? It seems like a pretty easy way to die to me but I may be wrong.

@SpatzieLover I give them to him live but he kills them within 5 seconds

@SpatzieLover – Snake owners freeze their mice mostly because the mice can attack the snakes and injure or kill them. If a snake isn’t hungry he’ll ignore the mouse and the mouse will attack the snake in self defense. A frozen one can’t do that.

It isn’t for the mouse’s sake.

@keobooks I would agree.

At girl scout camp a nest of baby mice was found in a tent. The counselors took the babies to the pier and dropped them in the river. Most of them just sank to the bottom, but one feisty little guy tried to swim to the surface. It was heartrending. I was sad and so were other campers, but we didn’t talk about it. I don’t think that solution was a good one, but the counselors were just teenagers and weren’t thinking.

@Sunny2 – interesting story.

I’m rather curious, what made you more sad, the ones that just sank, or the feisty one that, for all his effort, still met with his inevitable fate.

It rather strikes me as a metaphor for the general condition of all mortal beings. We can silently accept whatever comes and just sink to the bottom, or we can put up one hell of a fight along the way. In either case, the result is pretty much the same… or is it?

@6rant6

If I can avoid shooting anyone, I will. The problem lies in knowing who to shoot and who to not shoot. Ever been confronted with the situation where you have a split second in which to decide that issue. I have, several times. When your family’s lives are at stake, you tend to err on the side of caution. A human intruder is in a whole different class than one small mouse.

Besides, I just indicated that I see that sort of compassion as a gift from God, not that he had chosen to give it to me. : )

@janbb It waterboarding; the sensation of drowning was (is?) used to interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, in order to get ‘the truth’.
Not sure if it is not cruel.
Although mice or not men, of course.

The Black rat, popular for being the harbinger of the black plague in bygone eras was simply the host animal for the fleas that carried the plague virus. These same rats flourish in the California suburbs and I rescued a baby one years ago and kept him as a pet for 4 years.
He was skittish but very friendly and was a really neat little guy. In urban environments they run the telephone lines and feast on backyard fruit trees, pet food, bird seed and raid nests for the eggs of songbirds.

Rats are one of the most intelligent of all creatures, rivaling pigs and dolphins. They are in the upper echelon of brightness and adaptability. I love rats.
When I was involved in wildlife rehab I was the only one interested in small rodents. Mice, rats, gophers, voles, and waterfowl of course! lol and yes, the unsurviving ones were frozen as feeders for the raptor rehabbers. Yes, Co2 is a humane way to euthanize.

@YoBob The feisty one who had the heart to struggle against all odds. I thought he should win his battle. I was about 8 years old at the time.

Kind of makes me wonder if the “angels” take notice of those of use who appreciate our existence enough to struggle for what we want to achieve.

I almost drowned once. You know what sucks ? Fighting to stay alive.
When I was drowning, the worst feeling at the start of it, was fighting to breathe. It’s just impossible to describe unless you were on the verge of death too. And as a human who has more intelligence than a mouse does, this is what I did: a few minutes later I gave up and shut my eyes; I was dying. Everything was white and peaceful. Until I was pulled out.
It kills me to know that the mouse was struggling, and fighting to breathe all the way through. (I couldn’t watch it being killed, so I went outside and cried instead.) But I was told it was struggling.
And I probably need to mention that it was one mouse, not really an infestation. (As far as we know.)
I saw no reason to kill it. I’d imagine that if it was this painful for me, it was definitely much more excruciating for it. As I said, drowning does NOT feel good, especially if you’re in a cage with no hope of surviving.

PS: I have a little kitten, but her being young obviously prevents her from attacking the mouse. When they put her in front of its cage she stared at it wide-eyed—almost sympathetic. Although, if she was older, I still wouldn’t make her eat it. I can’t. Which is why I took her away and told her to never harm a living thing. I doubt she understood.

@Luiveton I agree, drowning must be one of the most frightening ways to go. Not being able to breathe is terrifying!
Bottom line, anyone that can recklessly kill anything without batting an eyelash is borderline, if not entirely sociopathic. The lack of empathy is truly frightening.

Are you all vegetarians then? I grew up on a farm; killing does happen. It’s not something I ever choose to do but I find this all a bit precious. Don’t have the stuffing for a big fight right now; just wondering.

Even if you are a vegetarian, you can bet that tons of rodents get killed to keep the corn, wheat, oats, rice and soy from getting contaminated.

@janbb No I am not a vegetarian. I do buy only grass-fed beef killed via Temple Grandin livestock handling method…or local very local chickens/turkeys.

I prefer that any killing is done as humanely as possible.

I also come from a dairy farming family. Humane treatment of animals is completely possible.

@SpatzieLover I am all for humane treatment of animals and humane methods of killing, of course.

@Coloma I went to a family reunion in MS when I was a pre-teen. They taught me how to fish, and I caught a turtle. It was my first time seeing a real turtle up close, so I excitedly go to pet it lol.

An older relative, not wanting us to get bitten or snapped, takes a freaking garden hoe and kills it by chopping it in half, breaking it’s shell, and then throws it back in the water. W T F?!

OMG @Blackberry how horrific! Did the relative explain why? I mean it’s not like turtles can bite you if you touch the sides or back of its shell. I often help turtles cross the road

@Blackberry That’s awful, how traumatic for you as a curious kid. Bah, some people.
@janbb What I am talking about is wanton killing, “just because” killing, and employing extremely cruel tactics in doing so. Humanely “dispatching” an animal for food or survival need is not the same as recklessy killing just because.

@Coloma I’m not so far apart from you all. I guess that having grown up on a farm where mice can be very detructive I just don’t see the killing of one as high on the list of immoral acts. If drowning is “cruel and unusual” (and it used to be fairly common for pesky animals) then maybe it is the wrong thing to do.

@janbb I agree, I’m not protesting killing some mice that threaten ones food supply only the methodology of the manner in which it is done. It was common parctice forever, probably still is in some rural areas to drown litters of unwanted puppies and kittens. I just think the methods are inhumane. It would be kinder to just crush it’s skull with a rock rather than a slow and terrifying death.

I don’t know or didn’t ask what he was thinking. I guess he really just didn’t want to leave any opportunity open for one of us to be hurt, but Atilla The Hun-style dispatch wasn’t needed. Lol.

Personally, I’d go as far as saying killing animals is wrong. Why aren’t we allowed to feed on humans again, by the way?
But apparently, it’s essential for our well being; it’s the circle of life.
However, @janbb , I would not say that I am entirely vegetarian I do not eat meat, just chicken and sometimes fish , but when you feed on a certain animal, do you drown it beforehand? I don’t care if I’m a cannibal even (Not a very good analogy but ignore that) , I’d purposefully kill it, not drown it just to get rid of it.

As I said before, drowning any animal/human is just plain wrong.
PS: I tend to sympathize with small, harmless animals. Sorry if I’m ranting, but I’m a sensitive person, I guess. You had to be there, it was pretty tough for the terrified mousy.

I am not opposed to killing animals if there is a justifiable reason. Pest control, disease control and for food are appropriate reasons. When we need to kill animals every attempt should be made to ensure we use humane methods. Drowning the mouse doesn’t seem to fall into that category to me and really, one mouse… I would put it outside. It seems like wanton cruelty to drown it. I put insects outside rather than kill them.

And yes, it is just one mouse but I don’t see the distinction between cruelty to a single mouse or a single bee or a domestic cat, dog, tiger, cow or whatever. Cruelty to animals is cruelty to animals. Unless there is a good reason for killing an animal/animals, it shouldn’t happen and when it does, it should be done humanely.

@Bellatrix

Great answer! : )

Thank you @CaptainHarley.

You’re welcome. There seem to be quite a number of kind and compassionate people on here, and you’re certainly one of them. : )