M’kay, so I’m living in a house that belongs to a friend of the family on a temporary basis. The living is a little rough, what with the house being built in the 1930s and having been unlived in for about a year. There’s no carpeting, the heating and cooling system is archaic and mysterious, and the roof is on the verge of collapse. But, it is about a block from my work and was a convenient place to live cheap while I look for somewhere else, right?
I’ve dealt with a lot of nonsense from this house. I was born and raised in suburbia, and this house is IN suburbia, but yet has a lot of country-house problems due to a large and overgrown property teeming with life. Now, sure, it’s cool to look out your window and watch the squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, and even the family of deer that lives on the place, true. However, I have dealt with a series of escalating invasions into the house, which is not nearly as fun. Mother Nature is cool with me, until it’s in my freaking house.
When I first moved in, it was ants. The ants were pansies. I retaliated with spraying and ant traps, and they gave up in only about a week or two. It was an easy and unsatisfying victory. They didn’t mount any kind of defense.
The second wave was an invasion of those unholy orange ladybugs that have taken this area of the country by storm. A few of them flitting around was irritating, but okay. I sprayed a bit around the back door, where I suspected entry was occurring. I’d sweep up a few dozen in the basement (where I sleep, mind you) over the span of a week. Fair enough. Unfortunately, this relative peace and harmony was disturbed when we turned the heating on. I went away from the house on a day trip – maybe 12 hours – and came back to about a thousand of the damnable things right over where I had sprayed. Apparantely they must have been in the heating ducts, or something. And, I’m not exaggerating. They were all around the floor and the window by my bed, and IN my bed, and did I mention I got home at about 4am after driving for about 7 hours each way on this trip, and before I could sleep I had to sweep the things out the back door and even SHOVEL them up with a dustpan. They were in huge piles. But, I felt that I won. After the ‘event’, I only saw one or two more around the house. Fair enough. The battle was won.
So, I was sitting around the house feeling pretty satisfied about my victory. All I have out is my tiny TV and my computer (no 'net) and, due to work concerns, I was there very little. I pretty much would come home, nuke a frozen dinner, play Morrowind for an hour, and go to bed. All was happy for about a week or two.
Then, one evening, I was eating a peanut butter sandwich in my living room, happily playing Morrowind and having a drink, when I started to hear noises in the kitchen. Now, a bit more background – this house freaks me out just a little bit because the guy’s parents are dead and lived here for most of their lives, and they still have portaits on the walls and stuff, and even though I’m a skeptic, when you’re kinda drunk and it’s about midnight and you’re alone, it’s a bit harder to be a skeptic when you’re hearing noises. At first, I’m just thinking “it’s the house settling, or something, it’s fine” when it’s obviously a crinkle noise. Houses don’t make crinkle noises. Fricking ghosts messing around with the empty grocery bags make crinkling noises!
Eventually, my heart practically leaping up to my throat, it gets loud enough that I have to go find out what is going on in there. I get up and walk slowly around the corner. I hear scramble skitter skitter skitter and I see a little shape go across the floor and under the sink into the cabinet, which is OPEN, and I KNOW I always leave that sucker closed.
I throw some stuff around to make sure that nothing is still lurking nearby and go over to the counter. I had left the peanut butter out and open for a little while when I was eating my sandwich. I am enraged. Some horrible vermin was in my food and now I can’t eat any more peanut butter, but even worse there are some fricking animals in my house and I briefly consider going to a hotel before I just have a few drinks, clean the place up to make sure there’s no more food sources out, carefully check my bed and go to sleep and resolve to work with the problem the next day.
Now, I should explain that I’m really not too squeamish of a girl. It’s important that you understand that I dealt with the previous insect problems okay but mice or rats or a squirrel or whatever it was is simply too much for me to deal with. Rodents are gross and they carry disease, and they could crawl on me when I’m asleep and I wouldn’t know it or I might wake up with them on me and, dear God, maybe it was the alcohol but that thing looked HUGE and …
Okay, getting a little off topic. So, I go to work and on the way home I buy some moustraps (the old fashioned spring-trigger kind). I took the peanut butter that had been fouled and used a spoon to put the stuff on the traps, and set them around. And wait. And wait. No hits. One night, one of them moves about 90% in a circle, but is still baited and triggered. I wonder what’s going on.
Eventually, though, I notice that there are droppings appearing on the counter, and I know there still must be something in the house. All this time I’m pretty much staying as much out of the house as possible and refusing to cook at home. One night I get woken up by weird gnawing noises from the laundry room – it sounded like gnawing on METAL and I don’t know what that was about, but I went and turned the dryer on and they stopped. That day I go to Wal-Mart to see what other things I might use. I buy a couple of glue traps thinking maybe these would work better. They are these huge rat traps, because I am still thinking, oh god, what if it’s a rat or something and they’re in my house…
Anyhow, so I take out the peanut butter from fridge isolation and for once, it’s daylight. And I notice… for the first time… that the invaders had not only nibbled on my peanut butter, but they had actually left droppings in the peanut butter. I was very glad I hadn’t touched the stuff last time. I fill with rage. These bastards actually shat in my freaking peanut butter.
Now, it’s on.
I place the glue traps out on the counter baited with more of the tainted peanut butter. I go and play computer games in the other room for not maybe an hour or so when I hear a faint shuffle shuffle from the kitchen.
I pick up my quarterstaff from the corner of the room and slowly move into the kitchen. I expect some massive horrible creature to be floundering on the floor with its foot in a glue trap. Nothing. So I curl my head around to the dark kitchen counter… and there doesn’t seem to be any movement. But, yet… wait, I didn’t leave the trap there… and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see the little ears of a tiny little field mouse now helplessly mired in the huge rat-sized glue trap.
I feel a strange elation. My mind goes “Gotcha Ya, you peanut butter shitting bastard! You should have never woken me up at 4 AM!”
Now, I am stuck with the “well, what now” issue. I grab a Swiffer duster handle (FULLY extended) and nudge the mouse, trap and all, into an empty trash can. I am kinda flipping out but I make it outside and drop the garbage bag into the huge industrial garbage can out by the curb. As I go inside, I feel a little bad for this mouse and its little crumpled ears. I usually would be all for the humane release somewhere, but, well, I am all skeevy about the whole deal anyway and I am sure as heck not grabbing that mouse and pulling it out of the trap and besides which I have nowhere even remotely nearby to release this thing.
I shakily decide to go to bed. And I hope beyond hope that this was the only mouse.
The next day, I wake up still thinking about the mouse as I go upstairs. I check the other trap right away… and there’s a second mouse.
The elation is gone. All I have is the hollow sadness realizing it wasn’t just one lonely stray. There are mice in the house and I’m going to have to keep this place on lockdown until they are all gone. I give this one the swiffer duster-garbage bin treatment, too.
I go to work and come home. I set eight more glue traps all over the kitchen. Eight might sound like a lot, but somehow I feel like it’s not enough. I go and wash all of my sheets and bedding again.
I wake up in the morning, and go gingerly into the kitchen. I check the two by the sink. Nothing. Sigh of release. I turn over to the counter, and blinking away the morning fuzzy eyesight I see another mouse. Just one… but wait, there’s a trap missing.
I get the swiffer duster handle and move the dish towel over … there’s a mouse flipping out. The other ones just lay there, but this one is freaking out and trying to get out of the trap. It must have freaked out before enough to manage to get the dish towel to drop onto it and move the trap like six inches away. I leave it to flip out while I get the bin and dispose of its friend. I am a little worred about mouse #4… it is only in the trap by its back feet and could get out any minute. I can’t wait any more. I use the forky end of the duster handle and start to nudge the trap toward the bin as the mouse flouders about. Just as it’s about to dip and fall off the counter into the bin, it grabs out with its two front paws and grabs the edge of the counter.
It seems like minutes but is only a few seconds when the mouse loses its grip and falls in, still thrashing wildly. I go reptilian-brained and start to mutter “oh god oh god oh god”. I run out and throw it in the garbage can after doubleknotting the bag closed and then throw several more heavy bags of garbage on top of it, trying to knock the thing deeper into the glue and suffocate them. As I’m freaking out, I notice the family of deer and the groundhog that live on the property standing not ten feet away from the trash can. They watch me briefly, they run away from me, as if to say, we know you’re a killer. We know what you’re doing to those mice.
I feel vaguely sorry, but I know I’ll do it again tonight.
You started this war, Nature. I will finish it.
Sorry, but it was begging to be said.
