Acting Effectively: A True Story

In my younger days, as I tramped around by road and by rail, I met with a group of students who lived in an old sorority mansion which had been converted into a co-ed house for some 32 people inhabiting about 25 rooms. I was offered a mattress in the basement on which to sleep for a brief period.

In my time at this household, which operated on weekly Sunday evening consensus meetings, I saw that their system of residents’ rotating duties for cooking and cleaning worked decently, and that about 80% of the residents would attend the Sunday meetings, though the participation level of individuals varied greatly.

The household had much earlier in its existence voted to keep a vegetarian kitchen, leaning toward fully free of any animal products except those kept by individuals; rarely was the communal budget spent on milk or cheese, nor did the provided communal meals incorporate such things. But being built three stories high and having no household cat, the first animal-related problem to come up — predictable, in hindsight — was rodents feeding on the cooking supplies in the household’s pantry.

The initial response to this was sensible enough, to simply keep the goods secured from access to these pests: within glass jars, on shelves, and in racks suspending from the ceiling, as well as to be thorough about not leaving any food remnants out to entice the little mammals. And while all of this sage advice was met with compliance, for everyone had a self-interest in ending the enticement of mice to scurry about the house, the population of the rodents was more than one and they were fed well enough that it soon enough increased.

As it became obvious that the population of mice was not being deterred but was in fact rising, the students were perplexed, but resolved to take more effective countermeasures. The first Sunday meeting was held and there were no objections to the proposal that live-capture traps be deployed throughout the household, to catch mice who could then be harmlessly relocated elsewhere in the town. One or perhaps two (but no more than three) of the students had suggested more serious and terminal measures such as fatal spring-loaded traps, or glue traps, or poisoned pellets, but everyone agreed to first try to avoid the killing of these innocent creatures.

By the next Sunday meeting, mice raids upon the food supplies had become more evident, and the mice themselves had been sighted in action, often made known by a shriek at the time of occurrence. And as clear as it was that the rodent population had grown from the week before, another one or two students (at most) had joined in the suggestion that poisons or deadly traps be deployed. But the majority were sympathetic to the mice, and harbored no ill will, wanting only to relocate them rather than see them dead. “Besides,” it was said, “the live-traps seem to be working well enough, and we have relocated seven mice already.” Of course, whether that was 70% or 7% of the total population was unknowable — though I suspect nobody would have guessed at the former figure.

When the third Sunday meeting came, I was no longer staying at the house, having headed south on a short sojourn, but I was told that it was quite an event. In the time since the last meeting, the mouse population seemed only to have grown, and there were rumors of mice being killed here and there by individual students with no aversion to sufficient measures of pest control. Those rumors were put beyond doubt when, after the decision-making body had assembled for their evening meeting, one such mouse-killer dropped two corpses onto the floor in a dramatic display. I was told that she then pleaded for an intervention more drastic than anything as-yet undertaken, which had not quelled the budding problem of a house being overrun with mice competing for the humans’ foods.

However, the display of death backfired, fueling some weeping from the more fragile students, some of whom claimed to be traumatized by the sight. Then proceeded a round of personal stories, where students spoke of the painful memories they could never suppress, of the time they saw their cat or their father kill a mouse or a rat, and how they were sickened by the recollection of it: the liberal arts students were not short of ability to give prosaic details and linguistic flourish to these accounts. The vegans announced their steadfast opposition to consenting to any mortal actions or devices being used with their participation or approval in the house that they lived in and contributed to; that it would even be considered was an outrage to the ethic of the household principle which had long ago determined to provide its residents a violence-free diet without any sacrifice of an animal’s body parts. That the live-capture traps had been found fully empty for two weeks now was not of concern, and the resolution to implement more effective measures against the mice did not achieve consensus and was not adopted. And though nobody had at that time a count of the mouse population that day, there is no contention that it had by then risen a few magnitudes higher than it was three weeks ago.

And by the time of the subsequent Sunday meeting, I was returning north, so I made an effort to veer from my route so that I could check in on this household where I had developed a couple of good friends. I was keen to see what the situation was with the mice, whose population was surely still climbing, as it had no imposed reason to halt. But to my surprise, the subject was not at all mentioned in the entirety of the group’s gathering. As a visiting observer, I did not interrupt their proceeding, and only afterward inquired with one of my mates about this unexpected absence of discussion. I was then informed of the events occurring over the preceding week, and upon the prior Sunday, to conclude with the revelation of why the subject could escape having ever been resolved under unanimous decision by the household.

As the divergence of opinions had paralyzed this group for a few weeks, with ideal solutions being attempted (and failed) repeatedly, and dogmas and ideologies being given an equal standing (if not priority) to more unpleasant but thoroughly effective course of action, the mouse population had steadily grown. By delaying a firm and fully adequate intervention, the good intentions of the vegans and the most timid of student residents had spared the lives of those initial rodent infiltrators, but those well-meaning youngsters had also unwittingly ensured that more mice would come to reside within the house. And ultimately that meant that even if they never saw this reality or would rationalize away their culpability when confronted with it, those students impeding decisive action in the early days of the problem actually bore a significant responsibility for the deaths of a great many mice. Because finally some anonymous and brave one (or more) among the 32 residents simply resolved to ignore the need for consensus and rectify the worsening problem: early one morning, holes were made in the walls, through which was delivered an enticing poison that the mice were attracted to eat.

And with that I was given a memorable lesson in the negative consequences of half-measures and the costs and harmful consequences of indecision.