Of Mice and Women

May 31, 2007 - Thursday
Current mood: exhausted

I have come to be known by my friends and family as somewhat of a "take charge" person. Regardless of whether I'm asked to, I will most likely begin ordering people around in any given circumstance. I've told my friends that I'm not bossy, just……directive. I'm not afraid to assert myself when someone crosses me the wrong way. And I can handle virtually anyone with a perfect combination of sass and nerve.

Despite the façade of valor I emanate, there is one thing that sets me on edge. One fierce and terrible force in the world that, when confronted with it, causes me to turn semi-schizophrenic. One tumultuous and loathsome antagonist in my life that always drives me to my knees….in prayer, not surrender.

Mice.

I don't. Like. Mice.

I'm not particularly afraid of them, as in running and jumping onto the nearest table in an effort to get away from them. No, I'm more nervous around them. I don't enjoy the sight of a little mouse scurrying across the floor and then disappearing for approximately 11 minutes until it, once again, scurries across the floor from behind the couch on which I am sitting.

I'm used to mice. My parents live across from a wildlife conservation area, and one fateful autumn (I affectionately refer to it as "The Year of the Mouse") we caught 17 of these furry monsters, including one that had to be drowned in a sink full of water…that was a rough one.

So it's not like these pests are a foreign entity to me. It's just that...my dad has always been the one to handle the mouse occurrences that arose in the past.

About 6 weeks ago, on a hot and muggy April day, my roommates and I decided to turn on our air conditioner. And that's when we saw the first one. My cousin Tom and I were sitting in my living room, watching TV when he spotted it running behind my television, behind my DVDs, and directly behind the couch where I was sitting. I kept my cool….just walked downstairs and asked my roommate Jen for her mousetrap, so we could take care of the little guy. My brave and valiant cousin handled the problem by setting the trap and ingeniously shaking a paper bag near where the mouse was sitting, scaring the mouse and forcing it directly into the trap he had set. Talk about Mac Giver. I was so grateful to have ridded our house of the pesky problem.

The weather hit another cold spell and about a month passed without any vermin. And then we turned the air on again.

The first day we turned the air on, I was sitting on my couch watching television and I saw one make its way across the floor. Katie was out of town for the weekend and Jen was not home, so it was just me and the mouse in our immense townhome that evening. I set the trap and placed it in the precise location by which we had caught the other one. And I waited.

When Jen got home, I was still waiting. I had seen it scurry across the floor several times, but apparently this particular mouse wasn't interested in peanut butter. So I explained the situation to Jen and prepared her so she wouldn't be frightened at the sight of the nasty little creature that had taken up residence in our dwelling place.

That night was a tough one. Jen lives on the bottom floor of our townhouse, and I on the top. Both of us would swear we heard the rodent rummaging around in our respective rooms that night. In my case, I heard papers rattling under the nightstand beside my bed. Now, you must understand that I sleep on a huge King-size bed, but I only use one corner of the bed for actual sleeping purposes. The remainder of the bed is normally used for temporarily housing items such as clothing and books, until I decide it's time to clean. When I heard the papers rattling, they were (of course) directly underneath the corner of the bed where I sleep. I shot up from my slumber, tentatively reached over and turned on my lamp to see if I could find the evil intruder, and when I couldn't find anything, I decided that desperate times call for desperate measures. I did an army roll to the other side of my bed, jumped over to the floor lamp by the door, and turned it on. Then an untamed thought process ran rampant through my mind.

If I don't see the mouse now, then where did he go?
He's probably paralyzed by the fear of me wrestling around and turning on the light.
Do mice have claws?
If they have claws, then he probably grabbed on to the blanket on my bed and climbed up it.
THAT MOUSE IS PROBABLY TRAPPED UNDER MY COVERS RIGHT NOW!
I'm not getting under the covers…I know there's a mouse in there.
I have to make my bed and sleep on top of the covers.
Yeah, that way if the mouse is in there, he'll be trapped because I'll be on top of him.
He'll suffocate and die.
But then I'll have a dead mouse in my bed.
That's gross.
I'll make the bed and sleep lightly on top of the covers.
Hopefully then it will have enough room to wiggle out if it wants to.
Yeah. And I'll keep the light on so I can see it if it gets on me.
And I'll turn the TV on so I can't hear it rattling around anymore.
And I'll turn the fan on, too…just to be doubly safe.

Needless to say, that was a sleepless night for me. And the next day I left (still no mouse in the trap) for a weekend in Decatur.
I returned on Sunday night to an empty house, as Katie was still out of town, and Jen had gone home for the weekend, too. I promptly set my luggage down, turned the air back on (we had turned it off for the weekend, since no one would be home) and found a stiff mouse in our trap.

This was no ordinary mouse trap. It was black plastic and had a cover over the top of it, so you couldn't see the dead mouse….all that was showing was a stiff little tail hanging out the back. I was so delighted to have caught the disgusting house guest that I didn't even have time to get squeamish about picking up the trap. But then it hit me

I am holding a dead mouse, and I don't know how to open this elaborate trap.

So I shrugged my shoulders and threw the entire thing in the trash can. I had every intention of purchasing a new trap for Jen, since I had thrown hers away, but I had no interest in holding the trap with the dead mouse in it and trying to figure out how to open it. I scooped up the trash bag, and carried it outside to throw it in our trash bin out back. Carrying a huge sense of accomplishment, I threw the bag away, closed the lid and smacked my hands together.

Now I can live in peace.

Approximately seven minutes later, I was sitting on the couch watching television when I saw something scurry from downstairs and into my living room.

You have got to be kidding me.

Yes, we had yet another mouse…only now I had thrown away our only trap. I promptly put my shoes on, grabbed my purse and headed to Wal-Mart to purchase some traps.

Wal-Mart did not have the fancy, "you don't have to see them once you smash their little heads with a big heavy bar" traps. I had my choice between sticky traps and wooden. I chose the wooden. I also purchased a bag of rubber gloves, because I knew I didn't want to pick up the traps with my bare hands.

As I stated earlier, my dad was the one who had always taken care of the mice in our house when I was growing up, so I didn't know how to set a mouse trap. I called him and he talked me through it. 15 minutes, two snapped fingers, some tears, a lot of sniffles, and a good deal of frustration later…I had finally figured out how to set the stupid things.

As I was baiting a few of the traps (I believe I set three or four of them that night), something caught my eye. That little mouse was climbing out of our air conditioning vent.

So I placed several traps next to our vents to no avail. I sat back on the couch for a few minutes and then decided I would go check the trap I had placed behind the trash can. I opened the pantry door and realized I had forgotten to change the trash can liner from the previous mouse…and then I saw it.

Sitting in our trash can, staring up at me….begging for mercy was a live tiny brown mouse.

Now, what am I supposed to do? I knew I couldn't kill the thing. And I wasn't about to "set it free outside" just for it to come back in again. I knew there was only one thing to do. I was going to have to carry the entire trash can down two flights of stairs and out the back door and then out the gate and dump this little guy into our trash bin and close the lid.

Mice can't jump well. They can climb, but with this plastic trash can there was nothing for him to grab on to. I knew he would attempt to jump out, but he wouldn't be successful. I grabbed my keys (I guess they made me feel safer), picked up the trash can with one hand and thought, "Nicole. You know this mouse is going to try to jump out…and you're going to freak and drop the trash can and then he will still be in your house." So I firmly held the trash can with both hands.

As I made my way to the bottom floor of the house, the little guy started his escape attempt. I was determined not to drop the trash can, but I was majorly freaking out, and I needed to do something. So while this little mouse was jumping up and down in this small trash can I was holding, I also was hopping from one foot to the other and emitting a low, whispery scream. A few seconds of the hopping and I regained my composure. I quickly opened the back door and walked to the gate. I am certain I had a disgusted/petrified/nervous look on my face because as I opened the gate a neighbor happened to be walking by,

"Those gates are weird, huh?" She said…apparently she assumed the look on my face was due to the gate.

"Uhh. Yeah. They're. Really……Uhhh……Loud." And then I made my way to the trash bin, dumped junior in and slammed the lid.

After all of this mouse business, I was tired and decided it was time for bed. As I went upstairs the thought struck me,

"I bet these mice are coming from our air conditioner. They have only ever come out when we've had the air on."

Oh no. I have an air conditioning vent right above my bed. I clamored up the stairs and bolted to the vent to close it before a mouse could fall out onto my bed. I closed all the vents in my room, stuffed a thick blanket against the bottom of my door, slept (once again) with the light, television and fan on…on top of the covers..and awoke the next morning still a little nervous about finding other mice.

Seven mice and two weeks later, after catching them on sticky traps, wooden traps, coming out of vents, and even one in a crouton box, we determined it was time to call an exterminator.

This exterminator assured us that we would not have any more mouse troubles. He placed a special chemical called "Mouse Bait" in various locations of the house and told us that the mice would crawl into our walls and die. He said that this special mouse bait would dry up all the fluids in the mouse's body and so we would not smell the mice once they died. He said we would never know how many mice we had caught and then had consequently crawled into our walls and died.

Now, I'm not sure I entirely buy into the idea that a rotting rodent trapped in our wall won't emit some kind of aroma…but we haven't seen a mouse for at least two weeks…..so we have peace of mind. And today I will reopen the air conditioning vents in my room.
Currently listening : Elliott Yamin By Elliott Yamin Release date: 20 March, 2007