I'll be honest... I hate mice

I used to think that I am a very clean person. I also used to think that mice flourish in dirt and filth. I used to think a lot of things, including mice come into the house in the winter. Those presumptions are all fading away...

Last night a mouse ran boldly past me and my roommate from the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. It wasn't like it was sneaking stealthily from corner to corner, dodging past shadows and creeping around corners. No. It was as bold as can be, as if it had every right to parade through our nice, clean, neat suburban lives. We've had glimpses of it before, but always hoped it was just a figment of the crazed imagination. But no, folks, it's real. And it's invading my life.

During the two years I lived in New York City, I had a similar encounter with a mouse in our Harlem apartment. I had always heard stories about rats as big as cats in Manhattan, and I swear I saw them on the subway and on the streets. They freaked me out. Then we had a little mouse in the house. When the super left some fishy white "rat poison" that didn't do a thing, he threatened us that if there was one, there would be a whole pack of rats, and that the restaurant adjoining our building had closed because of rat problems. As if that didn't freak us out enough, our little rodent-visitor became a frequent sight, darting through the kitchen and under the stove or the fridge. We invested in mousetraps from the dollar store downstairs and a can of cheese whiz. We even named the little guy Voldemort--something to do with his huge ears and the coming out of the new Harry Potter book that summer. But when we actually watched Voldemort come out from under the stove, poke away at the cheese whiz on the trap, then go back under the stove, that was enough. Erin and Anne Marie guarded the stove while I ran back down to the dollar store and bought every old wooden mouse trap and sticky glue trap they had. We lined the floor around the stove with them and waited. And waited. And waited. And nothing happened.

So last night Jessica and I pulled out two of those dollar store mouse traps and seeing as how we are much too refined to own any cheese whiz, we slathered on some peanut butter. I of course used the rubber gloves and set the trap off a bunch of times on my rubber gloved fingers (those are mighty powerful springs there). Every time I walk into the kitchen I hope against all hope that the trap will be sprung and we'll find a mouse. Jess even became the bigger person by promising to take care of the fellow--only with careful thought of the shovel in the shed and the fact that we don't need to keep the used mouse trap.

Please, oh please, oh please...