so joshua was cleaning up the loft yesterday, when he picked up a package of crackers off the coffee table i’d been eating earlier. “did you notice this hole in the package?” he asked, turning the package of crackers around. “no,” i said. “was it like that when you bought it at the grocery store?” he asked. “no,” i said, ” i just opened that package a couple of days ago. it was sealed.” he set the crackers down on the counter for further examination. upon looking closer, i could see the jagged edge to the hole in the plastic, and could also see the last several crackers had perfect little semicircles descending in size from the outermost side of the package. “that’s been chewed!” i said and snapped up to look at joshua.
we stared at each other for a second and then i rushed to the pantry to look at the rest of the crackers. i pulled out the basket. not only had the saltines been chewed through, but so had our water crackers. the organic chocolate grahams, however, remained untouched. i turned around to get the flashlight out of the junk drawer. “kyle and lacey found mice in their apartment a few weeks ago, and you know what? i noticed a funny smell in our pantry after you brought that new mop home, but i thought it was just the sponge off-gassing.” i said. “now that i think about it, i thought it smelled kind of like cat, you know like litter. now that i think about it, it reminds me of when i had a gerbil, that same kind of smell.” i found the flashlight, clicked it on and started shining it around the baseboards in the pantry-closet. “yeah, i can see little droppings. we definitely have a mouse.”
so this morning when i dropped off our rent check, i informed our landlord and they sent one of the workers over to give us some traps. we’ve got your standard, cheese on wood, trips the spring and the metal comes down crushing the mouse’s neck variety, and the more humane mouse enters the trap, goes to the back to eat the cheese and gravity works to shut the door, trapping the mouse so you can free him later to torture other apartment dwellers variety.
we set up this more humane trap with some cracker as bait, and not less than fifteen minutes later, heard a little click come from the pantry. “i think we got it,” joshua said from upstairs, “go look.” yeah, go look, he tells me. so i open the door to the pantry, stick my head in to look at the trap, when a GIANT MOUSE SCURRIED ACROSS THE CLOSET FLOOR AND SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME!! okay so it wasn’t giant, but it did scare the hell out me. joshua came running down the stairs, yelling “what? what?” i was backed up all the way to the couch pointing at the closet. “there, there, it ran in there!!!” he looked at me and laughed. “you screamed like a girl,” he said. “i am a girl,” i said. “it was this long!” I held my finger and thumb out as far as i could stretch them.
joshua started pulling things out of the closet when the mouse RAN BY AGAIN AND STARTED STRAIGHT TOWARD ME! joshua and i both screamed like little girls as the mouse scurried under the stove. we blockaded the kitchen off and resorted to the less humane traps, after agreeing that the mouse was too big for the other traps. then we had to leave to go to an appointment. when we came back, we peeked around the corner, hoping against hope that (a) we had caught the mouse and our worries were over, and (2) we hadn’t caught the mouse and didn’t have to feel bad about killing it. there were no signs of said mouse. i think we deafened it.
all i’m gonna say is that if this mouse is going to live here, it needs to start leaving some money around for the food and lodging, and i’m glad it left the organic food for us. apparently mice aren’t real picky about their food source.