We’ve Got a Live One

So I went to the hardware store to look for mouse traps. The guy at the front of the store said, “sticky or snap?”

“Are those my only options?” I asked him, at which point he looked at me scornfully and replied, “well we have the ‘have-a-heart’ traps.”

I asked him what he recommended to put in the trap to attract the mouse and he said that while conventional wisdom says cheese, in fact meat is a better mouse magnet. He insisted that chicken does the trick and added, “the greasier the better.”

Suddenly I was envisioning a cube of putrid ham rotting in a mouse trap on my living room floor. Luckily, the instructions on the trap recommended peanut butter so I went with that. I put the trap on the floor and then fled.

An hour and a half of yoga later I returned. It was dark in my apartment. Damn. That meant that if there was a mouse in the trap, I would have to deal with it minus my fearless roommate.

I walked over to the contraption and sure enough, the little trap door was closed. Of course, the doors close really easily so I considered for a moment that perhaps my stomping around the apartment had caused the trap to close. A moment later I heard a scratching noise coming from the trap.

Jackpot. Small problem though, I couldn’t do it.

Luckily I only had to be alone with the trapped mouse for about 30 minutes. My roommate came back from the library and I told her the good news.

“Now we can set it free,” I told her. She asked me if I needed help taking it outside. Silly girl.

“Well yes, because I can’t pick up a small gray box with a mouse inside.” So we walked the little guy a few blocks away to a park, put the box on the ground and he sprinted into a pile of dead leaves. I was so relieved as we walked back to our apartment, but had to turn around a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t following us home.

The Mouse Stays in the Picture

Thursday night was fairly rough. After seeing the adorable yet terrifying mouse, I was a little uneasy. I had done a lot of reading for a law class, which was boring enough to calm me down and make me extremely drowsy. At about 1, I crawled into bed. My head was full of legal jargon and I hadn’t thought much about my new roommate.

As I was just starting to doze off, I kind of woke up with a jolt. When I first opened my eyes, it seemed like something was scurrying across my windowsill, which is about 6 inches from my face when I’m lying in bed. I sat up, looked around and convinced myself I was going insane. I closed my eyes again, but this time I HEARD something crawling on my windowsill. I jumped out of bed in time to see the 2-inch shadowy figure bolt off the ledge and onto the floor behind my bed.

I called my roommate who was in her room with the door closed. Luckily, she is completely unafraid of small rodents. (sidenote: why are animals drawn to the people that are most scared/disgusted by them? Or, do I smell like cheese? I mean, the little guy tried to jump into BED with me!) In fact, when I told my roommate we had a mouse she said, “Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen that. I thought it was a spider.” So she went into my room, banged my trashcan on the floor and tried to get the thing to come out so she could trap it. It was futile.

“I think it crawled up into the wall,” she said, on all fours peering under my dresser, as I squealed in the living room.

I was exhausted. It was 2 a.m., I had class at 9 and I was too scared to go back into my room. I was also, inexplicably terrified of going near the couch, because the first time I saw the little guy, he was coming out from under it.

So, I did what any completely rational person would do: I grabbed a blanket and curled up in an armchair. With the lights on.

I fell asleep after squishing myself into a ball, so that I was able to use the arm rest as a pillow. Every 20 minutes I woke up because all of my limbs were asleep. I went through these 20-minute cycles until about 3:30, then I gave up. I moved over to the couch. And by couch, I mean loveseat, because it’s about 10 inches shorter than I am. By the time I woke up on Friday morning, I was stiff and cranky. I had law class at 9, featuring the Socratic method and so I did something that I haven’t done since I was a first year in college. I skipped class.

I figured that mice must be nocturnal, plus daylight had brought out the rationality in me, so I crawled into my bed at 8:30 and slept until 11. It was the best nap of my life.















awww....hey there little guy.

egad.

Bad news team.

I was sitting in my nice cushy chair, watching some television and trying not to think about school when something caught my eye. I looked down at the ground and lo and behold, a MOUSE was just standing there, 3 feet away, looking around for cheese or something. I gasped, it looked up at me, and then it scurried BACK UNDER THE COUCH. So now I’m still sitting in the chair and it’s in the room with me, but I don’t know where.

So what do I do? I immediately called my sister. I don’t know why I did that, because she isn’t an exterminator and she had some pretty awful suggestions.

She told me that I should go into my room. This is clearly a very bad idea because everyone knows that mice can squeeze themselves under doors. THEN she told me that I should put a towel under the door or something, but this is an even worse idea, because what if there is a mouse in my room already. If he can’t get out, he might choose to dash up into bed with me, which is much, much worse than being under the couch.

Also, my roommate is not home and her phone is turned off. I’m beyond traumatized right now.

HELP!