Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Humans: 1
Rodents: 0
When Erin told me last weekend that there was a mouse turd in my bathroom, I didn't want to believe her because that little fleck could be anything and it could have gotten in there from my shoe or something, nevermind that she dealt with this same issue about a year ago and she's more of a scholar on the subject than I am. But when I was eating supper and drinking a beer last week and saw movement in my peripheral vision, I knew something was up because I was only a quarter way done with that beer, so there was no way that I could be anywhere near drunk enough to be seeing shit. I sat there eating, watching my stove where I saw the movement and then I saw the fleck of a tail. Yep, I'm not alone here.
I tried to see if we could live together, this mouse and I, but it didn't work well. On Tuesday night, I swear I heard it scuttle from the kitchen to the couch that separates my bedroom from the living room and then stop, stand on its hind legs and look at me while I was in bed. I shot up to see if it was really there, but I didn't see it. Clearly this little bastard was faster than I imagined.
Interrupting my sleep is where I draw the line, so the mouse has to go. I did my research to figure out how to best take care of this, since poison was only an absolute last resort because my neighbor has cats and I was afraid that if the mouse ate the poison and died in a place where a cat could get it, then the cat would in turn get poisoned and die. Less destructive options exist, so I had to go with those first. I was leery of the snap traps because I was sure I would break my finger trying to arm one but I bought a couple to augment the "glue traps", which are essentially super adhesive fly paper that, when a mouse gets stuck on, it's supposed to not get unstuck, ripping its legs off in the process. Sounds good to me.
I armed a snap trap, baiting it with delicious crunchy peanut butter, as opposed to the delicious bacon the internet suggested I use. I put the glue trap out on my counter, which is where I believed the mouse was entering from somehow. When I woke up in the morning, I expected there to be a dead mouse with either a broken neck from a snap trap or ripped off legs from a sticky trap. Imagine my surprise when I found the peanut butter gone from the snap trap without the trap being disengaged and the glue trap resting on the floor, upside down, with poop on the sticky side, a V chewed out of the side, and an indent in the glue that was suspiciously mouse paw shaped. We're dealing with a super-intelligent mouse. His name is now Jerry.
Now, Friday night. It's go time, there's no more fucking around. Hanna's coming on Saturday, so this has to be taken care of. I'm not quite ready to exercise the poison option, but the situation is getting dire. I need to step things up, not quite to the point where I create an elaborate Rube Goldberg device whose purpose is to trap mice. Two sheets of glue paper directly next to a freshly baited snap trap, still baited with delicious crunchy peanut butter. If this doesn't work, we're going nuclear.
I woke up Saturday morning to what I thought were mousy squeals but was people setting up stands for the farmer's market beneath my window. I checked my traps anyhow. There's something dark on there! I didn't have my glasses yet and I was still too asleep to make out much. After getting glasses and turning on a light, yes, there's a mouse there, trying to get unglued. I took a close look at Jerry, reminding him who the bitch is now. Ugly little bastard with giant, inky black eyes, presumably for navigating in the dark. They don't look like the cute field mice destined for some larger animal's lunch you see on TV, nor was it brown with a head too big for its body like its namesake.
But now there's a problem: it didn't rip its legs off and die like the internet promised me. He was still moving and I made the mistake of naming him, so killing him will be tough. I don't want to stamp it with my shoe because the sound that makes would probably be gross, not to mention messy. Throw him in the river? I don't know, I think drowning might be the shittiest way to go, it's at least up there with being stabbed. In any case, I've got to do something before Jerry manages to get himself unstuck. So I put him and his trap inside a plastic bag and put that plastic bag inside a tupperware container so he could not escape while slept on how to dispose of him. Upon waking up, Jerry had suffocated inside his prison.
Now begins the process of ensuring that Jerry was a one time case, finding where he entered and what he was eating. I assume he came from the building next door that's being emptied and remodeled into a candy store. Looking inside the windows, it looks like the previous owner, the hippie man who sold his shop to work on the world's largest trivia contest full time, used the space as storage for various hippie garbage. I'm thinking that with them rustling up his current home, he moved to the next building, choosing my apartment over the neighbor's because mine is catless, but I'm doing another huge top to bottom cleaning to make sure his friends and family realize they're not welcome.
said Tommy T. at 8:44 AM - #
|
Rodents: 0
When Erin told me last weekend that there was a mouse turd in my bathroom, I didn't want to believe her because that little fleck could be anything and it could have gotten in there from my shoe or something, nevermind that she dealt with this same issue about a year ago and she's more of a scholar on the subject than I am. But when I was eating supper and drinking a beer last week and saw movement in my peripheral vision, I knew something was up because I was only a quarter way done with that beer, so there was no way that I could be anywhere near drunk enough to be seeing shit. I sat there eating, watching my stove where I saw the movement and then I saw the fleck of a tail. Yep, I'm not alone here.
I tried to see if we could live together, this mouse and I, but it didn't work well. On Tuesday night, I swear I heard it scuttle from the kitchen to the couch that separates my bedroom from the living room and then stop, stand on its hind legs and look at me while I was in bed. I shot up to see if it was really there, but I didn't see it. Clearly this little bastard was faster than I imagined.
Interrupting my sleep is where I draw the line, so the mouse has to go. I did my research to figure out how to best take care of this, since poison was only an absolute last resort because my neighbor has cats and I was afraid that if the mouse ate the poison and died in a place where a cat could get it, then the cat would in turn get poisoned and die. Less destructive options exist, so I had to go with those first. I was leery of the snap traps because I was sure I would break my finger trying to arm one but I bought a couple to augment the "glue traps", which are essentially super adhesive fly paper that, when a mouse gets stuck on, it's supposed to not get unstuck, ripping its legs off in the process. Sounds good to me.
I armed a snap trap, baiting it with delicious crunchy peanut butter, as opposed to the delicious bacon the internet suggested I use. I put the glue trap out on my counter, which is where I believed the mouse was entering from somehow. When I woke up in the morning, I expected there to be a dead mouse with either a broken neck from a snap trap or ripped off legs from a sticky trap. Imagine my surprise when I found the peanut butter gone from the snap trap without the trap being disengaged and the glue trap resting on the floor, upside down, with poop on the sticky side, a V chewed out of the side, and an indent in the glue that was suspiciously mouse paw shaped. We're dealing with a super-intelligent mouse. His name is now Jerry.
Now, Friday night. It's go time, there's no more fucking around. Hanna's coming on Saturday, so this has to be taken care of. I'm not quite ready to exercise the poison option, but the situation is getting dire. I need to step things up, not quite to the point where I create an elaborate Rube Goldberg device whose purpose is to trap mice. Two sheets of glue paper directly next to a freshly baited snap trap, still baited with delicious crunchy peanut butter. If this doesn't work, we're going nuclear.
I woke up Saturday morning to what I thought were mousy squeals but was people setting up stands for the farmer's market beneath my window. I checked my traps anyhow. There's something dark on there! I didn't have my glasses yet and I was still too asleep to make out much. After getting glasses and turning on a light, yes, there's a mouse there, trying to get unglued. I took a close look at Jerry, reminding him who the bitch is now. Ugly little bastard with giant, inky black eyes, presumably for navigating in the dark. They don't look like the cute field mice destined for some larger animal's lunch you see on TV, nor was it brown with a head too big for its body like its namesake.
But now there's a problem: it didn't rip its legs off and die like the internet promised me. He was still moving and I made the mistake of naming him, so killing him will be tough. I don't want to stamp it with my shoe because the sound that makes would probably be gross, not to mention messy. Throw him in the river? I don't know, I think drowning might be the shittiest way to go, it's at least up there with being stabbed. In any case, I've got to do something before Jerry manages to get himself unstuck. So I put him and his trap inside a plastic bag and put that plastic bag inside a tupperware container so he could not escape while slept on how to dispose of him. Upon waking up, Jerry had suffocated inside his prison.
Now begins the process of ensuring that Jerry was a one time case, finding where he entered and what he was eating. I assume he came from the building next door that's being emptied and remodeled into a candy store. Looking inside the windows, it looks like the previous owner, the hippie man who sold his shop to work on the world's largest trivia contest full time, used the space as storage for various hippie garbage. I'm thinking that with them rustling up his current home, he moved to the next building, choosing my apartment over the neighbor's because mine is catless, but I'm doing another huge top to bottom cleaning to make sure his friends and family realize they're not welcome.
said Tommy T. at 8:44 AM - #
|
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