Today's story is the second in a series on people who are habitually terrorized by diminutive creatures.
Last night around midnight, my roommate knocked on my door to tell me she'd spotted a mouse (!) that had made its way in the general direction of my room. Upon hearing the horror, I dumped the drowsy state I'd been flirting with and sat upright on my bed, finally realizing the perfect posture Mom had always nagged about. I turned on all the lights in my small room hoping to showcase the midnight performer. Surely, after about 15 minutes of silence and observation, I spotted the gray blob racing along the wall towards my closet.
"I see it! It's here! Oh my God you guys!" I shrieked to my roommates.
Within seconds, they approached my room equipped like a modern day freak show: one in shorts and a pair of rain boots covered with skull prints, the other in a Chinese-style night gown and knee-high cowboy boots. Both came armed with empty trash cans, hoping to trap a mouse that was clearly faster than a speeding bullet. We were in deep shit.
"It went towards my closet, but I don't think it went inside. It might still be in the corner around my yoga mat," I surmised.
The Cowboy Boots began to poke and prod the vicinity with my Swiffer stick. Feeling vulnerable without my own weapon, I grabbed my crutches - remnants from my foot surgery last year - and began swinging it around, tapping random surfaces around the room in hopes of frightening the damn thing to center stage. Apparently the drumming technique only drove the mouse to freeze in an unknown location because it was nowhere to be seen.
Deciding to interpret its AWOL status as an "Elvis has left the building" signal, we convinced ourselves that it probably crawled through an undetected crevice in panic and decided to go back to sleep... with every single bulb turned on in our apartment. The clock read 1:30am.
I was 15 minutes into traversing in and out of paranoia and unconsciousness when I began hearing gnawing noise creaking from the tall wooden bookcase next to my bed. I promptly called my two partners in early morning madness and like good firemen, they came in their fighting attire within seconds. Yes, the boots and the combat gear.
I shook the bookcase. No mouse sighting.
I pulled a corner of the bookcase an inch or two forward. It still didn't grace us with its presence.
I'm not sure what I was hoping for, because after every shake or movement, I took two frightful jumps in the air, just in case it leaped out at me.
"Oh shit, it's just chilling there behind the bookcase," the Skull Booties calmly stated.
The three of us began to build a makeshift barricade around the bookcase using my coffee table and shoe rack. We stuffed the smallest of cracks around the edges with old t-shirts, blankets and just plain good faith that the mouse would be trapped inside this ingenious (!) fence. We would simply place the trashcan over the mouse when it had nowhere to go and voila, mission accomplished!
What would happen after we trapped this ball of terror? Wait until it starved/suffocated and evaporated to rodent heaven? Name it Stewie Little and raise it as our own? How about close our eyes, rub it against our cheeks and savor the critter like Crispin Glover in Willard? Well, our lack of 'success'-ion planning didn't matter, because the mouse either escaped our hermetically sealed walls (magic mouse) or it was hiding underneath the bookshelf (spy mouse). No amount of violent tapping with my titanium crutches could convince this prick to emerge from the rubble of books. Perhaps our dubious engineering skills weren't good enough to capture a mouse and it had escaped our peripheral vision.
Since it was approaching 3am, we gave up on holding an overnight vigil and decided to quarantine my room by plugging the bottom of my door with more old t-shirts, effectively trapping the mouse in my room until the next day. I slept in thedog mouse house, also known as the living room.
Cowboy Boots called our apartment maintenance in the morning, pleading for some assistance. They sent over an Eastern European gentleman (?) who was sporting a pair of raggedy construction boots that were probably much more poisonous to my flooring than the mouse. He was so severely cross-eyed that I wasn't sure if he was looking at my eyes or my feet.
Secretly we were hoping Superman would come rescue us from this piece of shit, but I would have preferred a hungry, nimble cat over this man who only came equipped with a pair of gloves and some traps. After scattering several sticky pads in my room, we boarded up the space again with t-shirts that would never be worn or touched with bare hands again.
An hour or two later, we re-entered the premises. Ack! Our Stewie was struggling on a sticky pad in my closet, squealing for help and throwing a tantrum in hopes of breaking free. I placed a trashcan over the pad and topped it off with copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and John Adams by David McCullough. Even if this thing caught a second wind and pulled off a supermouse miracle, it couldn't possibly overpower 1500+ pages of hardcover literary prowess.
The Eastern European x-eyed gentleman (?) returned to remove the tortured soul and exclaimed "Why you do this?" as he dismantled our trashcan-book apparatus to reveal a screaming mouse. I handed him a plastic bag and left the room, unable to witness the conclusion to this ordeal. It came into my room on its own four feet but it was leaving in a body bag. (On the other hand, after I hurt my foot two years ago, I came into my room on my own two feet and left on all fours after the surgery left me incapacitated and in a pathetic state.)
"I do you a favor, I do you a favor," the man repeatedly muttered as he was exiting the scene of the crime. Poor mouse. The funeral procession was marked by broken English and two squeamish girls who insisted the man stay at least three feet away where they could see his hands (and thus the plastic bag).
After scrubbing down my room with the aforementioned Swiffer stick and countless cleaning supplies, I called my mom to report the episode. Instead of making me feel better, she gasped, "The mouse was in your room for over 12 hours? It probably had a ball in there, prancing around your bed and walking all over your stuff."
"Umma, I don't think it could have climbed onto my bed."
"Don't you remember that National Geographic special on mice? They can scale walls, what makes you think it couldn't climb onto your 2 feet tall bed?"
"Okay, gotta go do massive laundry. Thanks for nothing."
On my way to the laundry room, I received an email from Skull Booties who pondered, "What if the mouse was pregnant and had baby mice in your room?"
Last night around midnight, my roommate knocked on my door to tell me she'd spotted a mouse (!) that had made its way in the general direction of my room. Upon hearing the horror, I dumped the drowsy state I'd been flirting with and sat upright on my bed, finally realizing the perfect posture Mom had always nagged about. I turned on all the lights in my small room hoping to showcase the midnight performer. Surely, after about 15 minutes of silence and observation, I spotted the gray blob racing along the wall towards my closet.
"I see it! It's here! Oh my God you guys!" I shrieked to my roommates.
Within seconds, they approached my room equipped like a modern day freak show: one in shorts and a pair of rain boots covered with skull prints, the other in a Chinese-style night gown and knee-high cowboy boots. Both came armed with empty trash cans, hoping to trap a mouse that was clearly faster than a speeding bullet. We were in deep shit.
"It went towards my closet, but I don't think it went inside. It might still be in the corner around my yoga mat," I surmised.
The Cowboy Boots began to poke and prod the vicinity with my Swiffer stick. Feeling vulnerable without my own weapon, I grabbed my crutches - remnants from my foot surgery last year - and began swinging it around, tapping random surfaces around the room in hopes of frightening the damn thing to center stage. Apparently the drumming technique only drove the mouse to freeze in an unknown location because it was nowhere to be seen.
Deciding to interpret its AWOL status as an "Elvis has left the building" signal, we convinced ourselves that it probably crawled through an undetected crevice in panic and decided to go back to sleep... with every single bulb turned on in our apartment. The clock read 1:30am.
I was 15 minutes into traversing in and out of paranoia and unconsciousness when I began hearing gnawing noise creaking from the tall wooden bookcase next to my bed. I promptly called my two partners in early morning madness and like good firemen, they came in their fighting attire within seconds. Yes, the boots and the combat gear.
I shook the bookcase. No mouse sighting.
I pulled a corner of the bookcase an inch or two forward. It still didn't grace us with its presence.
I'm not sure what I was hoping for, because after every shake or movement, I took two frightful jumps in the air, just in case it leaped out at me.
"Oh shit, it's just chilling there behind the bookcase," the Skull Booties calmly stated.
The three of us began to build a makeshift barricade around the bookcase using my coffee table and shoe rack. We stuffed the smallest of cracks around the edges with old t-shirts, blankets and just plain good faith that the mouse would be trapped inside this ingenious (!) fence. We would simply place the trashcan over the mouse when it had nowhere to go and voila, mission accomplished!
What would happen after we trapped this ball of terror? Wait until it starved/suffocated and evaporated to rodent heaven? Name it Stewie Little and raise it as our own? How about close our eyes, rub it against our cheeks and savor the critter like Crispin Glover in Willard? Well, our lack of 'success'-ion planning didn't matter, because the mouse either escaped our hermetically sealed walls (magic mouse) or it was hiding underneath the bookshelf (spy mouse). No amount of violent tapping with my titanium crutches could convince this prick to emerge from the rubble of books. Perhaps our dubious engineering skills weren't good enough to capture a mouse and it had escaped our peripheral vision.
Since it was approaching 3am, we gave up on holding an overnight vigil and decided to quarantine my room by plugging the bottom of my door with more old t-shirts, effectively trapping the mouse in my room until the next day. I slept in the
Cowboy Boots called our apartment maintenance in the morning, pleading for some assistance. They sent over an Eastern European gentleman (?) who was sporting a pair of raggedy construction boots that were probably much more poisonous to my flooring than the mouse. He was so severely cross-eyed that I wasn't sure if he was looking at my eyes or my feet.
Secretly we were hoping Superman would come rescue us from this piece of shit, but I would have preferred a hungry, nimble cat over this man who only came equipped with a pair of gloves and some traps. After scattering several sticky pads in my room, we boarded up the space again with t-shirts that would never be worn or touched with bare hands again.
An hour or two later, we re-entered the premises. Ack! Our Stewie was struggling on a sticky pad in my closet, squealing for help and throwing a tantrum in hopes of breaking free. I placed a trashcan over the pad and topped it off with copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and John Adams by David McCullough. Even if this thing caught a second wind and pulled off a supermouse miracle, it couldn't possibly overpower 1500+ pages of hardcover literary prowess.
The Eastern European x-eyed gentleman (?) returned to remove the tortured soul and exclaimed "Why you do this?" as he dismantled our trashcan-book apparatus to reveal a screaming mouse. I handed him a plastic bag and left the room, unable to witness the conclusion to this ordeal. It came into my room on its own four feet but it was leaving in a body bag. (On the other hand, after I hurt my foot two years ago, I came into my room on my own two feet and left on all fours after the surgery left me incapacitated and in a pathetic state.)
"I do you a favor, I do you a favor," the man repeatedly muttered as he was exiting the scene of the crime. Poor mouse. The funeral procession was marked by broken English and two squeamish girls who insisted the man stay at least three feet away where they could see his hands (and thus the plastic bag).
After scrubbing down my room with the aforementioned Swiffer stick and countless cleaning supplies, I called my mom to report the episode. Instead of making me feel better, she gasped, "The mouse was in your room for over 12 hours? It probably had a ball in there, prancing around your bed and walking all over your stuff."
"Umma, I don't think it could have climbed onto my bed."
"Don't you remember that National Geographic special on mice? They can scale walls, what makes you think it couldn't climb onto your 2 feet tall bed?"
"Okay, gotta go do massive laundry. Thanks for nothing."
On my way to the laundry room, I received an email from Skull Booties who pondered, "What if the mouse was pregnant and had baby mice in your room?"
