Warning: This short story may be disturbing to animal activists, mouse-lovers, and relatives of Micky and/or Minnie Mouse. Reader discretion is advised. “We have a mouse.” That is the sound of denial and naiveté. A person that says that has yet to discover that never in recorded history has a house been occupied by just one single, solitary mouse. Some mice live with a roommate, because mice are cheap and wall space is expensive. Most mice, however, much like newly married couples of an older generation, move in to a new place with the intent to reproduce immediately. Maybe they receive pressure from their Italian grandmothers. Maybe they think their species is hurting and they are burdened with a Noah’s Arc-like responsibility of sufficiently populating the entire world. Maybe they’re selfish bastards and want to see mini versions of themselves running around like little idiots. Scientists aren’t sure why mice are so eager to hit the sack, but the fact remains that it is inevitable.
To make matters worse, mice are social creatures with no sense of personal space. Never has a mouse complained of a close-talker. Nor has a mouse ever moved away from its family to become a hermit. This is mostly because in order to truly be a hermit, one must own several cats, something that mice cannot do for obvious reasons. In addition, mice never die old and alone. Most die young in a blaze of naturally-selected glory. The rest die in a group of middle-aged has-beens, reminiscing on their younger years and sharing wallet-sized pictures of their 900 babies.
“We have a mouse problem.” Now that is the sound of acceptance. That is the phrase uttered by the person that knows that that little grey bastard they saw skittering from behind the fridge to that crack by the oven is actually eight little grey bastards. It took me about twenty-four hours to go from saying “we have a mouse” to admitting “we have a mouse problem.”
It all started when we were looking for an apartment a few months ago. After seeing several places that were in gang-infested locations, my fiancée, Jess, and I were about ready to give up. Then this old Victorian came along. Jess saw it on Craig’s List and went gaga over the high ceilings, massive square footage (for an apartment in the city, anyway), and updated kitchen.
“See? Look! It’s in a safe and convenient location!” she said, finding it on the map. I smiled stupidly as my excitement level rose to match hers, and we went to see it that night.
I was so excited about this apartment that in my head, we had already moved in. Had I remained objective going into the situation, I would have seen how old the building was and how unkempt the windows were. That smell in the basement would have registered as a raging build up of mold and God knows what else. I would have heard the current tenants as they said “We have a mouse…but our cat keeps it at bay.” Instead, my thoughts looked something like this:
Parking across the street: “Oh my god, this is the apartment! I’ll take it!”
Walking up the crumpling steps: “Oh my god, this is the apartment! I’ll take it!”
Going through each room as the tenants told me about the mouse: “Oh my god, this is the apartment! I’ll take it! I’ll take it! I’ll take it!”
Needless to say, we took the apartment. A few months later, when the weather turned a little cooler, I woke up from a deep sleep to a sound I had never heard before. I sat upright in bed and tried to figure out what that sound could be. Like a French wine expert trying to place each of the aromas and tastes in a complex Bordeaux, I pondered the sound’s qualities. It sounded like maybe the wind was brushing a branch against the outside of the house. It had a hint of a crumpling, no, crunching sound. Almost like someone was chewing on an emery board.
As I thought these things to myself, I started to wake up a little and immediately crossed “chewing on an emery board” off my list of possibilities. It could have been a branch, but – there it was again! I looked at Jess because I needed a second opinion on what this alien noise could be, but she was snoring softly. I got out of bed to see if I could get closer to the source of the noise.
I listened for it again, and determined it was coming from the kitchen. I entered slowly and assessed the situation. Emma, our spritely one year old Rat Terrier, was curled up in her crate, and Sparki, our 14 year old Jack Russell Terrier, was in his bed snoring louder than Jess was. “Oh, maybe it was just Sparki snoring,” I whispered aloud.
I stopped in my tracks and suddenly, months later, the previous tenant’s words began to register. I knew he said that their cat kept something at bay – oh what was it? We were standing right here in the kitchen when he said it, too. Was it a mouse? I whispered, shrilly. I reached for the kitchen light and flicked it on just in time to see a little grey mouse skitter from the dog food bowl to the pantry. I squealed and jumped back, wanting to get my feet off the floor as quickly as possible because it could…what? Eat me? Crawl up my pants and shirt and into my ear?
My fear turned to anger. I was mad at that mouse for scaring me, and mad at myself for being scared. It was just a mouse! It couldn’t do anything to me! Except maybe bite me and infect me with Rickettsialpox. Or worse, get into my Teddy Grahams. Or crawl all over me in my sleep, stopping only to lick my eyeballs… I skeeved momentarily, then grew determined.
“I’ll get you, you little bastard!” I whispered into the night. “I’ll get you!” I turned on the light to the pantry and looked for the mouse. I wasn’t sure what finding and looking at the mouse would accomplish, but I knew I needed to see it in a non-scampering state. Also, if it was still, then I could more easily direct my angry gaze into its beady little eyes. If it came out at that moment, however, I probably would have crapped myself.
“Where are you, you little piece of shit!” I said, now offering any words that possessed a high level of profanity into the shelving. I bravely peered under the bottom shelf, bracing myself, but found nothing. I moved aside some things on each shelf, still whispering sweet profanities aloud to nobody, and still found nothing. I was on my last shelf, the dog food shelf, when I found the poo.
It looked like black rice had spilled. “Black rice?” I whispered. “Is there such a thing as black rice?” I didn’t think we had any black rice, if there was such a thing, but Jess was always trying new things in the kitchen, so I looked on the shelf above to be sure. I saw that not only did we not have any black rice, but that the trail of poo led directly to a humongous hole in the side of a bag of dog food. A brand new, 16 lb bag of dog food.
“You tiny little jerks!” I said to the poo, as if this atrocity was its fault. At this point, my skeeve had reached such a high level that I blacked out. Much like the memories from a night of heavy drinking, my memories from my night of heavy skeeving became patchy after this point. The next thing I remember happening was Jess grabbing my shoulder.
“What are you doing? You have been scrubbing the shelves with Chlorox wipe after Chlorox wipe for about forty five minutes!” she said. “Are you cleaning for the party?” She had witnessed me do some funny things in my sleep before, and thought I was sleep walking. Each time, she tried to play along for as long as possible to try and get me to say something ridiculous. In one sleepwalking instance, I made the bed (with her still in it) and announced that I had to “get ready for the party.” When she asked me what party, I didn’t answer. Apparently, I only looked confused and got back into bed. I shrugged and told her that “only the Chinese are coming” to said party. When she informed me of this incident the next day, we shared a good laugh.
But this wasn’t sleepwalking.
“What? No. We have a mouse,” I said, throwing away the wipes. When she realized I wasn’t sleepwalking and that I was actually doing something crazy for real, she became perturbed.
“So buy some traps and clean up tomorrow! Get some sleep; it’s just a mouse,” she said, returning to the bedroom. I stood there in my pajamas with a bag full o’ mouse poo feeling quite misunderstood. Did she not skeeve like I skeeved? Did she not feel the same brew of anger and fear that I felt? Did she not believe me? I was flabbergasted at the possibility that any or all of those could be true.
"She just doesn’t understand," I whispered to myself, gleaming with crazy. "Once she sees the mouse, she’ll get it." I finished wiping up, threw out my wipes, and got back into bed.
I didn’t fall asleep, though, for another hour and a half. Even when I did sleep, I had dreams that reeked of PTSD from my encounter with the little grey bastard and its poo. I woke myself up a few hours later saying “The poo! It’s everywhere!” and waving around an invisible Chlorox wipe. I was poo-shocked.
Saturday morning came, along with it the promise of a delicious brunch. I awoke groggily to the smell of coffee and eggs, and my hunger walked me to the kitchen. Jess was setting the table. “Well good morning!” she said.
“Good morning,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. What’s that smell? That’s not a brunch smell. I narrowed the source of the smell to my right hand. It smelled like Chlorox! At that moment, it all came flooding back to me. “We have a mouse!” I exclaimed suddenly, my pointer finger taking its “ah ha!” stance straight up in the air.
Jess handed me a mug of coffee and sighed. “I know, you told me last night. Anyway, I have a meeting at school with my intellectual property law group in about 45 minutes, so I can’t stay long…” Gleaning from her “anyway” that she was both changing the subject and leaving me to deal with the grey bastard all by myself, my thoughts shifted to focus on just how I would conduct my war against this tiny beast.
Step one: Buy mouse traps.
Step two: Set traps in kitchen and pantry area.
Step three: Catch mouse.
Step four: Dispose of mouse.
Between steps three and four, I felt that familiar anger. My eyes narrowed and I clutched at my coffee mug. I rocked back and forth a little and felt a low growl escape my lips. Emma and Sparki, our two dogs, looked up at me and whined.
“Babe?” Jess was holding my shoulder and had a very concerned look on her face.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, shaking it off. “I’m just thinking about how to get that mouse.”
“Um, alright. Well, I love you and I’ll see you in a few hours ok?” Had I fantasized about my plot against the mouse all through breakfast? Looking down at my empty plate, I guessed I had. This mouse was making me loose my mind!
“Yeah, come back soon, ok? I love you too,” I said, trying to act a little more normally. We kissed goodbye, and I was glad to see she looked less worried when she closed the door behind her.
I made sure she was around the corner before I leapt out of the house and down the street to the hardware store. It was only a few blocks away, and I ran them all, fueled by anger, skeeve, and an internal loop of the Rocky theme song.
Once inside, I rooted through the pest control section and found it: The mecca of mouse murder methods! Poisonous bait traps, glue traps, snap traps; you name it, they had it! They even had ultrasonic repellent devices that were a little more humane and acted as a mouse preventative! I envisioned every one to decide which method would be best for me.
Poisonous bait traps: This box full o’ poison posed as a delicious treat to mice, who would not be able to resist its green gumminess. After devouring the green stuff, the mouse would crawl away with a hand on its belly and a smile on its little face, thinking, “I ate like a pig!” It would slowly dawn on the mouse, however, that something wasn’t sitting well from their green feast. “Maybe I should break into that box of Tums,” it would think to itself, but the poison worked too quickly for that. After a session of vomit and shits, the mouse would keel over, likely in its home in the wall, and die. The idea of dead mouse smell protruding from my walls made me gag a little. Plus, these would be toxic to the dogs if they got into them, and knowing my two little idiots, they would find a way. I ruled these out.
Ultrasonic repellent devices: Little electronic devices that emitted high-pitched sounds that mice apparently hated. Their box sounded very logical and scientific. If the mouse hates this noise, which science tells us it will because of the frequency, then it will no longer inhabit your house. I wondered, however, if they were leaving out that it worked because it was a very high frequency recording of “It’s a Small World” played repetitively that drove mice to kill themselves. I didn’t want anything in my house that could lead to suicide, however high-pitched, so I ruled these out as well.
Glue traps: Sticky paper the mouse walks across and, well, sticks on. The mouse is thereby unable to move or escape, and dies a slow and horrible death. This, of course, led to the possibility that the mouse would still be alive and struggling when I found it. I would have to pick it up by the tail, as the box instructed, and dispose of it still alive. I illogically envisioned the mouse escaping from my grasp and using its teeth to climb up my arm and face and into my nose. “Gross!” I whispered to the box. Maybe I wouldn’t have to pick it up and I could just let it alone for a few hours to die, I thought. Impossible. What would I do; find the mouse still alive but reduced to struggling for its last few breaths stuck to the glue trap and then walk away? I don’t know if I could go back to watching “Ace of Cakes” after that. I shuddered and returned the glue traps to the shelf.
Snap traps: The traditional mouse trap (although they had giant rat-sized ones, too) that ends the mouse’s life in an instant by breaking its neck when it goes for the bait. My best friend is getting her Ph.D. in virology and works with mice in a herpes lab. She uses these snap traps on her mouse subjects, and calls them “cervical dislocation devices.” If the pros used these traps, then I would use these traps. I drummed my fingers together and whispered, “excellent” as I picked up five packages, equaling ten traps. I bought ten traps not because I had multiple mice, but because I assumed my mouse had multiple hang-outs and wanted to be sure I got the chump.
I also bought more Chlorox wipes and some plastic dry food containers for all our mouse-accessible food in the pantry. This inevitably reminded me that the dogs were almost out of food due to the recent contamination of their stored food supply, so I stopped at the pet store next door to restock.
I emerged from the pet store with a huge bag of dog food in one arm and four bags of plastic containers, wipes, and mouse traps in the other. I wanted to hurry home to start my all out attack on the little grey bastard as soon as I could, but I was only able to travel bulkily down the street at a slow shuffle. I stopped several times to change grips on all my purchases, whispering curses at my foe and its poo each time. Finally, panting, I reached my door. I put down my purchases, straightened my shirt, and unlocked the door. I went inside and prepared for battle.
I looked at the shelves and to my horror, found more poo! Upon further inspection, I noticed that the dog food bowl was empty. Sparki and Emma free-feed and the bowl was half full when I left earlier that morning, so that was odd. Upon my exit, the mouse must have gone directly to their bowl. I pictured the little bastard making several trips to clean out the bowl to the tune of the Price is Right winner’s music. “I’d like to see you try that when I’m around, you bold little eating and pooping machine!” I said aloud.
I couldn’t continue working in such a state, so I blacked out and cleaned everything. When I came to, the new package of Chlorox wipes was empty, and my kitchen and pantry were sparkling. There was a garbage bag full of the wipes and other mouse-related undesirables, which I threw into the garbage behind our house immediately. The new bag of dog food had found its way to the giant plastic container and onto the top shelf, and the human food was now housed in smaller plastic containers on the middle shelves.
I stood in the middle of ground zero to admire my work. The area was now a fortress, hopefully impenetrable to my little furry foe. Hands on my hips, I sighed and mentally prepared myself to launch the offensive.
I studied the picture on the back of the snap trap package. It pointed out the parts of the traps, but otherwise, didn’t do much to aide in the process of actually setting the trap. At least, unlike IKEA directions, it did have some words of wisdom that I tried to interpret. “Put bait on bait hook.” This was easy enough and I successfully put the bait, in this case peanut butter, on the “bait hook” with a chopstick.
The second and final step, setting the trap, was where I ran into some trouble. The makers of the trap decided only “Step 2:” and an arrow pointing to the picture was adequate. I found this odd because putting the bait on the bait hook didn’t really require a written explanation. The “Step 1:” and arrow method would have sufficed. No matter, the makers of this trap chose to outline step one and leave the tricky step two to the abstract and rather artsy picture, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I stared at the two-dimensional, poorly scrawled picture intently, as if I could unlock its secrets with my mind. “Just tell me where the little stick latches into place!” I begged. Taking my frustration out on the trap, I grunted and bent the cheap metal to see if I could force it to fit the latch, my fingers greasy with peanut butter. “Set, already! Just set!” I told the trap, perspiring, frustrated, and angry.
Ten minutes and a broken trap later, I pulled back the bow of a second trap and pulled the latch over. To my surprise, by luck alone, it fell into place and the trap was set. I smiled with glee and put the trap right by the dog food. I set a few more traps and put them in places I thought the mouse might visit: The side of the refrigerator, the pantry floor, right by the oven, and other such locations. I gated the area so Emma and Sparki couldn’t sniff their way to a broken paw, returned to the living room, and waited for the fun to begin.
About ten minutes of watching the Food Network went by when I heard a snap. I ran excitedly to the kitchen gate and stopped abruptly. I wasn’t prepared to see a dead mouse! Breathing through my mild freak out, I stepped over the gate and began to check the traps. Dog food bowl: Nothing. Oven and pantry: Nothing. Fridge: Nothing…but wait! The trap had been activated and the peanut butter was gone! I looked closer. The bow had gotten caught on the bottom of the refrigerator, leaving the trap activated but open for the mouse to safely steal the peanut butter and walk away. I had been foiled! I moved the trap to the other side of the refrigerator, where the gap was wider and much less likely to get caught, and huffily went back to my perch on the couch.
I spent the rest of the day, even my time with Jess, in a bitter mood. The mouse had gotten away the first time, and there had been no subsequent attacks on the traps since the morning’s close call. I was worried the mouse would avoid the traps and that I wouldn’t catch it. I found that knowledge of my foe might be lacking, and so I did what many people do in such a situation: I Googled it. Specifically, tips on how to rid one’s home of mice.
After weeding through exterminator links and trapping devices, I found a document full of tips. It seemed homemade, which to me said whomever wrote it knew about getting rid of mice from experience. I grew excited and clicked on the link.
Tip #1: “Buy mouse traps or mouse repellent device.” I smacked my head and thought, “Wow, that’s genius! I wonder how they thought of that!” The tip continued to mention some sort of bucket trap involving a cardboard toilet paper tube and an ultimate live mouse release as an alternative. Then it read, “…but sometimes they come back.” A horror movie buff and Steven King fan, I shook my head and continued to tip #2.
Tip #2: “On snap traps, use peanut butter for bait.” I already knew about this tip because growing up, we sometimes had mice in our attic. My dad had tried cheese at one point, but the mice were crafty and found a way to get the cheese without setting off the trap. Peanut butter, on the other hand, they had to really work at to get off the bait hook. He caught all his attic-dwellers with peanut butter, so that was what I had decided to use. So far, the Google search had done little to abate my worry.
Tip #3: “Set your traps at night because this is when mice are most active.” This made sense to me, as that was when I heard the little bugger scampering around and chewing emery boards. Now we were getting somewhere.
Tip #4: “Get a cat.” I’m allergic, thank you. But that made me think about my Rat Terrier, Emma. Rat Terriers were bred to kill rats on ships. I thought of letting her sleep outside of her crate tonight, but decided to give the traps a chance first. After all, who knows what kind of nasty diseases (Bubonic Plague) this mouse could be carrying.
Tip #5: “Get an exterminator.” I stopped reading after Tip #5, because it was pretty clear this list was mainly targeted towards those with no common sense whatsoever.
Nevertheless, I felt somewhat comforted. I knew I would catch the mouse that night. I could just feel it! Armed with my knowledge and excitement of the kill, I found it difficult to fall asleep.
When I finally did around midnight, it was a deep, dreamless sleep that only lasted for about two hours. At 2 a.m., Jess shifted the bed as she got up to pee, waking me up. I rolled back over and tried to slip back into dreamland, when I heard a squeal in the bathroom.
“Hey, we got it!” She said, scampering toward the bedroom doorway. “Can you clean it up? I really have to pee.” I could tell she was doing the pee dance even without my glasses, but I would not let this victorious moment be ruined by bladder discomfort! I caught the little grey bastard!
I put on my glasses and headed proudly to the bathroom trap. I felt an exuberant sense of accomplishment as I turned the corner and saw it there, neck caught in the snap trap. Examining it, I determined that it was a pretty good size for a house mouse, and it looked either well-fed or pregnant.
“Hey, I have to pee!” Jess whined from behind me. Without averting my gaze from the dead mouse, I held up a finger, signaling for her to wait. I put on my mouse removal gloves that had once been relegated to the tamer task of dishwashing, and put the mouse, trap and all, into a plastic bag. I cleaned the floor and wall area with a few wipes, smiled at Jess, and said, “All clear!” She rushed into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
I gathered the body bag and danced my way to the public garbage can across the street. I wasn’t about to throw a dead mouse into our garbage out back! First of all, the garbage cans were directly beneath our bathroom, as if the smell of bathroom business wasn’t bad enough. Second, to add to the bathroom and garbage smells, the smell of death would attract a whole new wave of scavengers. I knew my landlord didn’t keep lids on the garbage cans, so that would be disastrous. No, I would bury my enemy in the public garbage across the street.
With my furry foe out of the picture at last, I found it quite easy to fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. It was over…or so I thought.
The next morning, my walls of triumph came tumbling down when I awoke to Jess saying, “We caught more!” More what? I wondered. Mice? She couldn’t mean mice; we only had the one mouse! I got out of bed, brow ferociously furrowed in worry and disbelief. I went to check the three remaining traps I had set from the night before.
When I saw the first dead mouse, significantly smaller than the Daddy Mac we caught earlier in the evening, I was still holding desperately to my denial. I thought, This mouse didn’t live in our house. Someone must have just put this mouse here.
When I saw the second dead mouse, also significantly smaller, I only thought, Oh my god. When I saw the third tiny mouse, I was finally ready to say, “Babe, we have a mouse problem.” She looked at me and said, “Yes, yes we do,” and shuddered. That was when she began to skeeve like I skeeved, and I finally felt like she understood.
As I disposed of the casualties across the street, I came up with a theory. Daddy Mac mouse was the ring leader. When Daddy Mac didn’t return with dog kibble, his or her babies held a family meeting. Ultimately, they decided as a group to venture out into the wild of our house to find food, Daddy Mac, or both. For a moment, I felt a twinge of pity for the poor little guys. They were so cute and tiny and helpless! Then I remembered: They were disease-carrying pooing machines. There was no other way to successfully break off our parasitic relationship. I couldn’t just ask them nicely to move out or leave them a farewell mix tape with a note that said “Thanks for the good times” on their doorstep. The best way to bury the hatchet in this case was to use it first.
I just hoped I had caught the entire family in one fell swoop.
I reentered my apartment to the sound of Jess screaming at Emma. “Emma, drop it! DROP IT!” She was chasing Emma, who was shaking her head back and forth vigorously, in circles around the kitchen.
“What’s going on? What does she have in her mouth?” I asked, slightly horrified but mostly excited. When Jess didn’t answer, I asked Emma, “Whatcha got there, girl? Can I see it?” She proudly trotted up to me and, after shaking her head back and forth one last time for good measure, dropped a tiny grey mouse onto the floor.
I jumped back, just in case it was still alive. After a few immobile moments from the mouse, I asked Jess, “Do you think it’s still alive?”
“Probably not. I mean, look at the tooth mark there,” she answered. Sparki entered the room, fashionably late as always, and headed excitedly for the carcass. “No, Sparki!” Jess said, and ushered both dogs into the bedroom. The mouse hadn’t moved during the commotion, but I was still not 100% sure it was dead. It could be faking it, I thought.
I decided to administer two very scientific tests. First, I moved closer to the body and held my breath. I looked very closely for signs of breathing. In the three or so minutes I was crouched there, I didn’t see any. The animal didn’t even blink. Scientific test number two: I poked it with a disposable chopstick. Nothing. Not a twitch, not a scramble, not a whimper. Nothing.
I decided it was safe to move into disposal mode. Putting my hand inside a plastic bag so that minimal skin was exposed, I bent to pick up dead mouse #5. With the speed and precision of a jungle cat, I picked up the mouse, turned the bag inside out, and tied it up as quickly as I could. I breathed a sigh of relief and headed once again to the public garbage across the street.
That was the last mouse for day one, but we caught two more mice the next night and one mouse the following night, putting the dead mouse count up to eight. It’s been two weeks since the onslaught against Daddy Mac and the Mousettes, but I still put out traps every night. I know now that more Mousettes could come out of the woodwork at any time, and when they do, I’ll be ready.
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