I Murdered Mickey

I don’t know. Up until Wednesday, I was pretty sure that human beings had the whole animal intelligence thing on lock. I use the word “was” because last Wednesday, our apartment officially became a war zone, turned upside down by a creature that can’t possibly be smarter than I am, but outfoxed me at every turn.

We were being held hostage by a mouse. The mouse had a gun and a flak jacket on, he wasn’t talking to police negotiators...the mouse knew, as did we, that there was no way he’d go alive.

Let me start where I left off.

After the discovery of the mouse and the ripping apart of the kitchen to no avail, I was working from home on Thursday when I look up to see Mickey (as we had begun to call him) on the kitchen counter behind the coffee pot, staring at me. I stared at him right back for about a minute, until he ran back across the counter and back wherever he came from. I was so grossed out. My roommates were scared of Mickey, I was more grossed out. Mice are dirty. They poop all over everything. And they smell. So there was no way that I wanted him near our beloved coffee pot, and everything else for that matter. So I jump up and I rearrange the few traps we have out to fall directly in line with where he was running to and fro from. Oh but this Mickey, he didn’t take the bait. Nope, he just ran right around the traps. Up until this point, I had hoped that Mickey was dumb and would just willingly sniff and eat the peanut butter on the traps, but Mickey wasn’t as dumb as originally thought.

So fast forward through the rest of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, where Mickey would torture us by popping up all over the apartment. If he wasn’t hanging out on the counter, he’d run all over the stove and down through the burners. Or, he’d take everyone by surprise and run out from behind the couch back to the kitchen. What was worse, is that on Friday and Saturday nights my roommates and I both had company staying at our house, so we had to explain why our house was booby-trapped for mice. And then watch everyone scream and shout (a few brave souls attempted to catch him) as he ran around the traps, through legs, at people, etc.

Finally, by Sunday we had enough. We put our heads together and devised a plan. A. and I went and brought 12 glue traps and 12 regular old-school mouse traps. P. and I did the mousetrap assembly while A. just walked around the apartment, cleaning up nothing and muttering to herself. (I definitely discovered Annette’s Achilles heel…rodents. I look forward to the day when I can use this to my advantage.) We lined up the traps across the doorway where the living room meets the kitchen. If Mickey decided he’d like to go watch TV, he’d have to run across the glue traps to do it. We lined up the mousetraps across the kitchen counter, in case Mickey decided he’d like to take a leisurely stroll by the coffee pot again. We finished by placing two traps on either side of the couch, in the back, in case he wanted to take a nap back there. I was satisfied with our Fort Knox-like line of defense. A. and P. went to their rooms to go to sleep. I stayed on in the living room, inexplicably hung up on Extreme Makeover on the Style Network. Sure enough, within minutes of it quieting down, Mickey decided to show his face from under the stove. I watched him stare at the glue traps, clearly perplexed by this new obstacle in his path. I slowly picked up the phone and told A. not to come out of her room. Mickey sensed my movement, however, and ran back under the stove. He reappared a few minutes later, stared at the glue traps again and ran back under the stove. I was pissed. He was supposed to run right at me and get stuck…only he was proving once again, that he was no one’s fool.

He reappeared a few minutes later ON TOP OF THE STOVE. This is when I started to get angry. Refusing to be held hostage by the mouse, I had cooked dinner for myself that night because freelancing doesn’t afford me the opportunity to order out with the frequency that I used to. I save money by cooking at home. So, even though I was a bit scared, I had baked a chicken in the oven; the oven that is directly below the stove Mickey was now using as his personal stairway to heaven. The very idea that he may have walked or ascended through the stove on the way to the oven, either before, during or after I had made my chicken was enough to make me want to get up to the bathroom and vomit. I made a silent vow that Mickey would die tonight for this faux pas. For the time being though, I yelled for him to “get the fuck off the stove” and then turned to my right to watch A. shriek and scream out what was he doing, as I knew she would. I told her not to worry about it, and decided that I’d have to leave the living room to force Mickey to make his move.

Several minutes later, I’m watching TV on my bed when I sense a movement to my right. I look at my door and see Mickey scampering into my room. I guess he figured that if he couldn’t go straight into the living room, he’d squeeze into the next smallest space – the slit under my door - and see if anything was up in here. The idea of the mouse in my room, only discovered because I happened to keep my light on and saw him, made me furious. I yelled at him again to “get the fuck out of my room!” I called Annette and told her to put a towel under her door and then I pulled a towel under mine and began the wait.

About an hour later, I’m caught up in an episode of CSI, when my phone rings. It’s A. She asks, “Do you hear that?” I say, “No.” She says, “The mouse is yelling.” I say, “The mouse is yelling? Hold on.” I put my ear to the door. I hear nothing. She says, “I heard him yell.” She sounds like a five year-old who just saw the boogie man for the first time. I knew I was in this alone. I said, “Hold on…I’m going out.”

I slowly opened the door. The kitchen is dark. I hear nothing. I tip-toe across to where the light is to discover Mickey, in one of the glue traps, struggling to get free. I scream bloody murder.

It was one thing to see him running across the apartment in his little brown blur, it was quite another to see his 3 inch body stuck in a trap, while he wriggled around trying to chew off his own leg to get free. I just started yelling, “Oh my god! Oh my god! I have to kill him, I don’t know how. I don’t know how! Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!”

By this time, A. has gathered up the courage to peek at him. She sees him squirming, yells that he’s getting free and jumps up and onto the couch yelling “Kill him! Lia kill him! KILL HIM NOWWWWWWWW!”

This continued on for at least two minutes as the two of us just watched Mickey, trapped by his hind legs and tail, work his hardest to get free and we screamed holy hell. Finally, I bent over, put my hands over my face and was like get it together Lia. This is your job to finish.

I stared at Mickey, who looked like he may come free at any moment. I grabbed the paint roller extender we have behind our kitchen “table” and flipped another glue trap on top of him, making a little Mickey/glue trap sandwich. I begin yelling again, which begins A. yelling again. I am screaming, “What do I do now? How do I kill him? How do I kill him? I can’t pick this up! I can’t pick this up!” And A. is still on the couch yelling “I don’t know! Just get him out of here, just get him out!!!”

So, for some unknown reason, I take the stick, because Mickey is moving around like crazy, and I just begin beating the sandwich. I couldn’t do it hard, but it was hard enough for Mickey to squeak with every whack. I’m yelling, A. is yelling, Mickey is yelling…and I’m just beating down harder with every yell not knowing what the hell I’m doing.

Finally I realized that glue traps are supposed to be the humane way to kill a rodent, but that Mickey is clearly not being treated humanely and I am beating a mouse to death with a paint roller extender. I look to my right and see our dustpan. I tell A. to get a couple of plastic bags. I put the dustpan on the floor, and using the extender, push the sandwich onto the dustpan.

I ask A. for the bags, which she throws at me, but being that they are plastic, they don’t go far. I’m like A., just hand me the bag, he’s not coming loose. She darts over, gives me the bag, and darts back to the couch.

I take the dustpan and flip it, over-easy style, into the plastic bag. Mickey has ceased to move at this point, he may have succumbed to his internal bleeding, but I wasn’t taking the time to find out. I sealed the bag and ran out the door, down the five flights of stairs, onto the street, dropped the bag on the pile of trash already on the curb and ran back up the five flights of stairs in about a minute flat. Once inside the apartment, A. and I continued to get the creeps over the whole ordeal, and stood in the living room, shaking off the chills and reliving the whole five-minute ordeal.

Finally, we calm down and A. tells me that I definitely win roommate of the month and that I am officially her hero. I take a moment to bask in the glory, but then realize that I actually beat the mouse, who was kind of cute, and I begin to feel bad. But not that bad when I remembered his escapades all through the stove.

In any case, I think our mouse problems are now over. Hopefully, over for good. Let it be known in the rodent world…if you decide to visit Apt. 5C…you just might catch a beatdown....ya' heard.