Damned Clever Rodents!!!

To my dear (and few) readers: I must apologize in advance for what is to be at least the third installment involving my epic struggle with mouse-kind. They are determined little buggers, and I must admit to being a bit overly-focused on their continued presence in my room. Seriously, there’s no food in here. I vacuum regularly. All I have is clothes and boxes. So anyway, at 7:30pm, I was watching a movie on my laptop, and saw a little mouse poking around along the baseboards. Irritated at the intrusion, and potential resulting mouse poop, and in the absence of management-supplied traps, I stomped off to our neighborhood True Value Economy Hardware store (note to readers: what part of “true value” do they not understand? Ridiculously Overpriced, and Often Superfluous Economy Hardware would be closer to the truth) to purchase some for myself. After deliberating over which kind of trap to buy, and consulting my father via cell phone as to the best method, I settled on glue traps, since those are what the management put out months ago, and I admitted that I probably wouldn’t be able to dispose of a slaughtered mouse myself. Instead, like the coward I am, I settled on what is probably the most inhumane method: baiting the mouse to get itself stuck in glue, throwing the live, struggling mouse into the trash, and inevitably, letting it starve to death.

So it’s now about midnight; I’m lying in bed, wearing headphones to reduce the chance of hearing any mice rustling around in my room, thereby reducing the chance of late-night hysterics on my part. I’m startled by a fairly loud sound from the corner by the door. Upon inspecting the trap-laden corner, I discovered a small, not yet fully-grown mouse thrashing around, stuck in the trap. I was plagued by a sudden remorse. I was going to have to scoop this little furry creature into a plastic bag, and throw it into a dumpster. I was going to be a mouse murderer. Delaying the inevitable, I called my dad, thinking to debate the advice he’d given me earlier about leaving the trap alone, even if it was already full. An answering machine message later, one of my roommates came home, and I swallowed my pride, and asked him to do my dirty work, and dispose of my captor. He agreed to, and went to put his bass away. Meanwhile, I went to check on the mouse, and apologize for its imminent death. No such luck. What do they put in those traps? Elmer’s glue? Paste? That little baby mouse somehow pulled itself and the trap about two and a half feet to my door, and used it as leverage or something to pull itself free from the glue. Now I have a glue trap back in the corner, with a bit of baby mouse fur. Great. So I told my roommate his services were no longer necessary. “They’re determined,” he said. “Yeah, determined to hang out in my room,” I said. Dammit. So now I’m back to where I started. Perhaps this particular mouse will be a little too freaked out to return to my room for a while—but for how long? And it has enough siblings and relatives to keep my four traps full—but for how long? To tell the truth, though, I’m actually a little relieved. As freaked out as I get when I hear them scurrying around in my room, some part of me still has a big problem with killing a mammal. Roaches, centipedes, spiders, mosquitoes, and water beetles give me no qualms. Perhaps it is the potential of mice to be pets that stays my hand. A conscience is an inconvenient thing—I wonder how many more mice it will last through… I may have to buy proper traps tomorrow. I wish I could just get a cat. That would much easier, and perhaps I would be less likely to start cooing on the street, when confronted by a couple leading kittens on leashes. Sigh. I really do want a cat though—and not just for their mouse-hunting prowess.