Serial, Killing the 3rd

We’ve been having trouble with midnight marauders again. We think they’ve been gaining access through a tunnel, but at first they eluded us, stripping traps of bait on three occasions. Not this morning though: a freshly re-baited and re-set trap caught our intruder with his hindquarters still in the tunnel entrance. The poor fellow took the fatal blow square in the forehead – unpleasant-looking, but at least the end must have been instantaneous. His last meal was a good one, as he had managed to eat most of the bait before the trigger wire came free. The usual pre-dawn burial followed, his little body not yet stiff, curled almost as if in sleep as he slid from my spade into the earth. Three small graves lie in a row now, but I’m still sufficiently un-hardened to my task to feel rather wicked as I looked down at the tiny form of my victim. Such a sweet-looking thing he was, with his pale underbelly and tiny pink paws that look so much like hands.

Update: My sympathies for the deceased not withstanding, I reset the trap immediately, and Miss C found another fresh little corpse an hour or two later. Burial will follow this evening: no flowers please.