It's springtime in Brooklyn, and the vermin have returned to us.
May 31, 2005This time, instead of the usual (and heart-stoppingly terrifying) waterbugs, we have mice. Cute, teensy-tiny mice. Adorable, filthy, plague-laden mice. So wee! Really, they wouldn’t wig me out overly, if I didn’t think of the hanta virus every time I spotted one making a run for the dog food. And when they’re sitting still, it’s one thing, but usually they’re rushing past. Scurrying, scuttling—any of these motions cause my limbs to flail about as I squeal girlishly. Why is this, that the tiny running things cause one to scream and scream and scream? Also! The noises. The skritchy scrabbly noises. In the walls. Like they’re playing soccer with the skulls of their ancestors. And sometimes—sometimes we hear them gnawing. Gnawing at the plaster, so they can get out. And eat our brains.
We put out a trap. They ignored it. If I leave the dog food unattended for more than a minute, one of them is making a play for it, but leave a hunk of American cheese out all night and the mice decide to exert some self-control. Or else they’re onto us. Actually the day after we left the trap out, the mice disappeared for a while. Then they came back, because they’re stupid and also, mmm, delicious Iams Mini-Chunks. No rodent can resist it.
Then I had to kill one. The dog was sniffing at something in the corner, and there was a quarter-sized baby mouse tangled up in some wires. It was shaking violently. How could my heart not melt? Poor little disease carrier, I wept. I wept softly, because Henry was a foot away, playing with his Star Wars guys. I tried to free it from its prison. I just wanted it to go back to its hidey-hole, back where it could grow up and live to freak me out. But it wouldn’t budge, and it looked sick, and also, technically, we’re enemies. I had a job to do. So as Henry engaged thrusters and activated the launch sequence and kissed Darth Vader full on the lips (he really likes Darth Vader), I nudged the mouselet into a container, tipped the container into a bag, held the bag as far away from me as I could, and told Henry we had to go outside right then! To throw something out! Something gross!
This got his attention. “What is it? It’s gross? What is it?” And for some reason I said, “Charlie pooped. Charlie pooped in the house, and I have to throw it out right now,” and Henry said, “That’s gross,” and actually followed me out the door and down the stairs, all the while talking to himself about how gross that was, pooping in the house, wow, that is really really gross. And then before I could think about what I was doing, I said to Henry, “Okay, don’t mind what I’m going to do right now,” and lifted the bag high and slammed it against the side of the building (rest in peace, poor little mousie) and if you live in Brooklyn and you were walking past right then and you heard a boy asking his mother, “Why did you hit the house with the poop?” now you know what that meant. You’re welcome.
Reader Comments (71)
And, I just read your waterbug story and may I say that it had seriously long-lasting gross-out power. GROSS.ME.OUT. I loved the title, too; once I dated a total hippy dippy guy who always gave me that freaking Buddhist story about the butterfly in the path or whatever the hell it was. Humans first, I always say.
Once my husband and I were playing cards (oh, the good old days) and he said, "don't move." I foolishly looked and there was a GIANT spider with an awesome, bulging thorax, scuttling across our carpet. He goes to get some paper towel and I said, "Step on it real quick just to stun it. It's huge." So he did a quick stomp, which of course, being on carpet, had absolutely no effect. But when we looked down, much to our soul-numbing, speechless, motionless horror, the spider was running across the floor with a smaller abdomen. And 50,000 live baby spiders -- not ridiculously small, either, like egg-born ones -- were fleeing in all directions. We were both yelling and we doused the entire area with as many things that come out of spray cans (insecticides, cleaning supplies, perfume, etc.) as we could muster. I will never be the same.
Eeek. What a dilemma!
Perhaps put the dog food on the trap?
I like the way you think on your toes, dog poop, that was a good one.
Good luck!
I can totally feel your pain as I am the designated pest assassin in my house. My oh-so-manly husband calls meekly for me whenever he is faced with an intruder of any variety. Mice are so cute, it's hard to want to kill them. Spiders and snakes, no problem though.
I once had an apartment that had a lovely family of mice, and they lived in a large (think gaping) hole under the radiator. They were so friendly and domesticated that they would meander out and sit in the middle of the living room rug to watch TV with us. I never could bring myself to get rid of them. Still, I can understand your motivation!
P.S. You make me laugh!
I can totally feel your pain as I am the designated pest assassin in my house. My oh-so-manly husband calls meekly for me whenever he is faced with an intruder of any variety. Mice are so cute, it's hard to want to kill them. Spiders and snakes, no problem though.
I once had an apartment that had a lovely family of mice, and they lived in a large (think gaping) hole under the radiator. They were so friendly and domesticated that they would meander out and sit in the middle of the living room rug to watch TV with us. I never could bring myself to get rid of them. Still, I can understand your motivation!
P.S. You make me laugh!
Oh, and BTW: you're so brave! I once called my DH at work imploring him to come home early to kill a bug in the house.
My traumatic mouse story--using a paper towel, I caught the mouse the cat was abusing. Not able to think of a better method for putting it out it's misery, I squeezed it in my fist until it crunched and oozed (the process took under a quarter of a second--I tell myself it was more humane than stepping on it). I still occasionally flash onto the sense of heat oozing across my palm...
Alice, this was sad and funny and sad and hilarious all at once.
Julia. Eww. EWWWWWWWWWW. I live on the 26th floor and you would think that the spiders would not want to climb up this far but no. They do. And then they build 100s of webs outside our window. And freak us out.
Love your blog btw!
I get mice in the winter, when they come into my nice warm house to escape the snow. And they like to run around the attic above my head and gnaw things (to eat my brains! yes!) while I'm trying to sleep. After a particularly bad infestation one year I resorted to poison, which I hate, because OH YES the "they'll go outside for water" line is UTTER CRAP and instead you will find adorable cute DEAD mice in odd locations for WEEKS. *twitch*
Peanut butter in cap, float cap in water, lean ruler against bucket as ramp. Drawn to the smell of Skippy, mice jump in and drown.
BUT NOT BEFORE FLOUDERING AND SPLASHING ABOUT HELPLESSLY ALL DAMN NIGHT LONG!
We were driven to this desperate measure when a friend of ours who also had a vermin problem took his shoe off after a long day at the office, and a small mouse ran out of it. How he'd had that sucker next to his toes all day and didn't know it, and how the mouse survived the stinkiness/airlessness of his shoe captivity, I'll never understand.