Karma flips me the bird

Earlier this week, my uncle's cat brought in a mouse. Neither my uncle or his girlfriend dared to touch the mouse or even remove the cat from it, so they stuck a mixing bowl over the little beggar and waited for me to come round. I then had to manoeuvre a magazine under the bowl and carry the whole lot down the street to a churchyard, where I could safely release the beast.

On removing the bowl, I found the mouse cowering, but otherwise looking reasonably fine. However, it shuffled one step and I saw it had a gash in its belly through which organs (most likely intestines) were poking, leaving a small trail of blood as it dragged itself along.

I knew I should put the poor thing out of its misery. Yet I didn't have the guts (no pun intended). I stood there for a few minutes, hoping I'd get a little courage from somewhere whilst the mouse hauled its sorry carcass into a patch of undergrowth. Even knowing it would die slowly and painfully, possibly of some infection rather than its wounds, I walked away.

I should have know there'd be comeback.

This afternoon as I waited at the bus stop, from the corner of my eye I saw something flutter onto the yellow road markings next to me. It was a bird, some kind of finch. Something bad must have happened to it, to make it land in the middle of the road, I thought. Within a second a speeding car clipped the bird. It lay there on its belly, opening and closing its beak although no sound came out. I couldn't look away, and wished ferevently that the next car would hit it straight on and finish it. It didn't; the speeder had pushed the bird closer to the kerb than the traffic went, and so it carried on silently crying.

Next to me was a collapsed section of wall. I knew what I had to do. I picked up a heavy piece of stone and moved towards the bird. Just at that moment, the road became much busier than usual. There were no gaps in the traffic. I could only stand there and watch the bird dying. Finally it expired when a car came too close. I picked up another rock so I could scoop it up and leave it in the field behind me, rather than let it be squashed. Again, fate defeated me. The bus pulled up - I hadn't even seen it come around the corner - and stopped right over the bird.