Mousechief

My Picasso

There’s a mouse in my apartment. I don’t hate mice, but I’m certainly not going to invite them over for tea and crumpets either. This isn’t the first time a mouse has taken off its fedora, tweaked its whiskers and unpacked a suitcase in a guestroom I didn’t know I had. The well-behaved mice of my previous apartment stayed in the walls or fireplace and I understood why they were there—I was in a basement apartment in a city row home, complete with drafty nooks and crannies. These mice tended to stay in the shadows knowing their place, leaving the telltale dropping to hip me to their presence. The summer before last I moved into an apartment in a large complex with at least a hundred tenants across the whole property. I’m guessing this is why the mouse I have now is too gangster for its own good. 

This is a Good Times mouse, scratchin’ and survivin’ under MY roof. Here’s why I’m so pissed, besides having a mouse, it doesn’t have the character to stay out of sight or commit suicide in the snap-trap. Yep, snap-trap, I REFUSE to use one of those sticky pads ever again. Watching a mouse spin the whole pad around trying to get off and squealing while they’re at it, is no fun. Trying to pick it up while that scene is going down is also no fun and suffocation is just plain cruel. I need a clean kill: SNAP,done! 

You want to know why this mickey fickey is so gangsta? He, I’ve decided he’s male, has shown his face in the day light. Mice should be like vampires, sleep all day and up while the humans sleep. My b.f. set traps initially in the kitchen. The mouse loves to trail the dish drainer leaving little presents along the counter. The worst part, my kitchen counter is some dark, fake granite that hides these little pellets, so each morning I have to bust out a paper towel and Clorox to see if my homie paid us a visit. We found that the peanut butter laden traps were being cleaned but yet remained mouse-free. Then there was that weekend when the mouse popped up under the bathroom door to pay me a visit and then showed it’s ass in the living room later. So my b.f. reset the traps and placed them strategically around the apartment. Guess what? He cleaned the dayum traps again. At this point I’m just exasperated, especially because the peanut butter was pushed down into the trap. Our hope was he’d be forced to really burrow into that thing and then SNAP! Nope, we gotta straight street mouse. He gonna survive no matter what! He’s been doing this for years. He knows all the tenants that ever lived in my apartment. 

I’ve been feeling real comfortable lately, no mouse droppings in the kitchen, no signs of him anywhere else but then today I brought some boots to work to give away to a friend. When I opened the shoebox I noticed the tissue paper was shredded; thank God it was kind enough not to drop a bomb in with the leather boots. Still, I was enraged all over again. I’ve realized this mouse is winning and in order for me to win, I’m going to have to go all Rambo—blast it with a machine gun or Alexsander Petrovsky*—smash it with a pan. That hands off, soft kill shit isn’t gonna work here. There’s going to be a massacre and I’m going to have to get over my feelings about hurting one of God’s living creatures on purpose. I’d rather Tom & Jerry this situation, but we’re not allowed to have pets so it’s me and my man, going hard in the paint trying to get our space back.

Anyone have any suggestions?

*Carrie’s Russian b.f. in Sex and the City