As you may or may not know, last August I began a whole new chapter in my life by moving into my own apartment. The experiences I have gained so far have ranged anywhere from absolutely amazing to no shy of traumatizing (piece of advice, never use the broiler on your oven to cook hamburger patties, even if the directions do say it's an option. They begin by making scary noises and then proceed to catch on fire and it's a horrifying experience that raises questions of how much you truly know about fire extinguishers. For example, is it actually safe to spray a fire extinguisher into an oven?). But no matter where they fall on that scale, I can honestly say that every experience I have had while living by myself for the first time in my 24 years of life has certainly been interesting to say the least. I thoroughly enjoyed living alone until I moved back to Nacogdoches for this Spring semester.
It all really started when my mom and I were making my bed. She noticed them first. Little black pellets were scattered across the head of my bed. My first though was bed bugs, but no, it was worse, much worse. My brilliant mother quickly determined that these littler pellets were in fact, mouse droppings. Yes, you read correctly, there were several mouse droppings IN MY BED. If the idea of a rodent scampering about on your beloved place of slumber doesn't make your skin crawl, I don't know that anything will. After several hours of just feeling down right icky about this idea, I manged to convince myself that whatever creature had left those despicable little gifts was long gone. Oh if only I were right.
Everything was normal for a couple days. I got all my clothes unpacked and put away, got my beloved video game consoles into position, and had a pretty relaxing first couple of nights back in my apartment. The relaxing stopped at exactly 10:38 PM on Monday night. I heard rustling coming from my kitchen. Here is the series of text messages that followed between my mom and I.
Me: Omg, I think I hear the mouse.
Mama: Lol... where? (there are many lol's in these conversations because while this whole ordeal was horrifying for me, it probably ranks somewhere on her top five list of funniest things ever.)
Me: I don't know, somewhere in the kitchen it sounds like.
Mama: You need some glue boards.
Me: I have some, but I don't know where to put them. And they're in the pantry and I'm afraid that's where he is.
Me: I think it's under my sink. And it's loud now!
Mama: You should put one in the pantry and one under the sink.
Me: BUT HE'S UNDER THE SINK!!! He'll get me!
Then autocorrect decides to make an appearance:
Me: I don't hear it anymore, that's even scarier.
Me: I need a cat, a gun, and arsonist.
Me: Arsenic, although burning the apartment down would probably kill it too.
The rest of the conversation transpired via Facebook and my mom and I share way too many messages for me to try to dig through them to find these in particular. However, I do remember that my biggest worry at the time was not a mouse chewing through my walls or spreading any of the numerous life-threatening diseases they carry, no, my current fear was that I really wanted to play XBox, but was too afraid to leave my bedroom. You know you're a gamer when...
Anyway, I eventually do sneak out into my kitchen and bait two of the glue traps with peanut butter and place one inside the pantry, and the other outside the cabinet under my sink (I wasn't about to open that door). After feeling quite certain that the peanut butter would attract the little devil mouse to its demise, I go to bed and enjoy a surprisingly restful night's sleep.
I awoke the next morning to find that there was no mouse stuck to either trap, but I remained hopeful and was determined to enjoy my day. Thanks to having two online classes this semester, I do not have any classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays so I was very much looking forward to a nice relaxing Tuesday before these days off would become days to actually work on homework. I was oh so very wrong.
After eating lunch I hear the far too familiar noise coming from under my sink. This seems like a nice place to pause this particular story for a moment to give you a little background on myself to help you better understand the events that followed.
In many ways I am far from your typical girl. My roommate had on several occasions jokingly referred to me as "the husband" when we rented our apartment together last year. If something broke, I would fix it (or try to anyway), if a toilet was clogged, I'd unclog it (again, or try to), I even fearlessly killed the wasp that invaded her bathroom one night. I do not like to wear makeup, going shopping for clothes ranks somewhere below being water-boarded while my fingernails are ripped off one by one on my list of fun things to do, and a bad hair day is not a crisis, but is simply an excuse to wear a baseball cap to class. However, I learned something about myself when Lacey and I had our apartment, I despise mice. I can kill roaches, spiders, and wasps without batting an eye, I will let a bee walk up and down my arm without flinching, but the sight of a mouse transforms me into a shrieking, trembling, mess. In those moments I am, what most would call, a typical girl. It is also at these moments that the same people who complain about my lack of girliness (pretty sure that's not a word, but let's go with it), now complain about my utter abundance of it.
Ok, resuming the story now. I begin to hear a new sound, a sort of scooting noise. I tiptoe into my bedroom and remove my step-ladder from the closet. I soundlessly place it in the doorway of the kitchen and step onto the top step, stretching my arm as far as I can, I snap a photo with my iPhone and discover that the mouse is in fact stuck to the trap. But my initial joy is short lived. While he's stuck, he is only truly stuck by his tail and has already managed to scoot his way a decent amount of space across my kitchen. This was when I began to wish I'd gone with my better judgement and bought a couple of snap traps that would kill the little monster immediately (if you're a member of PETA or any other animal rights advocacy group, you probably wanna stop reading, it only gets worse from here). I scoop up my iPad and run into my bedroom to get some advice from my mother via Facebook.
I eventually devise a plan of attack. Seriously, if you are crazy and love mice for some reason which I'm not even gonna try to understand, you're gonna wanna skip this paragraph. You have been warned. My plan is to take an old t-shirt that I never wear, stand on my step-stool, drop said t-shirt over mouse (mainly just I don't have to look at it), and very VERY carefully... beat the thing to death with my Swiffer mop. I know what you're thinking, "how could a plan that was so brilliantly thought out possibly go wrong?" well, you don't know me very well.
Ok PETA friends you can start reading again. Now armed with my supplies I return to the scene of the crime just in time to see the tip of the mouse's tail (still attached to the glue trap) slide under my stove. "NO!!" I shout and lunge at the creature with my mop in an attempt to drag it back out to meet its doom. But instead, it squeaked, I screamed, and almost fell backwards over my couch. This is when Mama gets a panicked phone call at work from her wimp of a daughter. I told her what happened and begged her to come to my rescue. After she stopped laughing (it took a while) she said she was on her way.
Well guys, it's 4 AM, it's been a long but very exciting day (more on this in a future blog), and I am ready to go to bed. This will at least keep you entertained for a while and I promise to write the rest tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and stay awesome.
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