The Honest Truth

I see it. That brown piece of fluff with legs, scurrying along the wall and gone in a second. I scream into the phone. “What?” says the person on the other line. It takes me a second to recompose myself and somehow he guesses. “You saw a mouse?”

Yes. I’ve been seeing them everywhere. I go in the kitchen and turn on a light and they flee from the counter like children with their hand in a cookie jar. Guilty. They know they shouldn’t be there. They know its not their house. But the winter’s cold and our leftovers take good and you know what, if I was a mouse, I’d probably squat here too.

A fear of mice is in my blood. My mom is terrified. When she was a kid she went to the bathroom one night and a mouse crawled up from the toilet seat. She screamed. My nonna screamed. The women in my family can’t stand those furry creatures that flee when they sense a human.

Why are we scared of mice? I mean, they’re not rats, which means you’re living in dirt. We pay money to have furry things in our house and more money to take care of them. So why can’t we deal with the ones that chose our homes as home.

The first thing I find frightening about mice is I never know how many there are. 1? 20? 200? They all look the F&*(*ing same. There’s something comforting about having your pet mouse, naming it Jimmy, and trying to get a hello in everytime you see catch it running from under the couch. But mice are a mystery, they move fast, so there’s no way to tell them apart, and you can’t whistle and know they’ll come out from where they’re heading.

The second thing I hate about mice is they contaminate your food. It’s like your in competition for you own groceries. I feel like grabbing Jimmy by the neck and saying “get your own part time job. I paid for that.”

I hate that they defy science. The can collapse their skulls and back and fit in a hole the size of a pencil. Freak shows.

They remind me of my pet hamster from grade three, scratching at things all night and waking me from my sleep. The most disgusting mouse story I ever heard was from my friend chloe who said in one of her old houses, you’d hear so many mice running in the walls that it sounded like rain. Last night it was raining, but all I could picture was heards of mice by my window. It was the worst sleep.

It’s so complicated to kill them. There’s forums dedicated to the best way to get rid of mice. Either way you have to deal with the dead rodent. Wanna use a live trap? Be prepared to take a hammer to its head or drown the poor thing. Wanna use poison and forget about it? You’ll be reminded when you smell their rotting stench. It’s a lose lose. They die, you feel like death dealing with the aftermath. Apparently getting a cat and 49 cent traps are your best bet.

You start thinking they’re cute. My friend and roommate Ruth lived with me when he had mice. At first, we were scared, jumping of the couch and standing on the edge of the room with hockey sticks waiting for it to come out again. Even lifting a couch corner made us scream. Then, Ruth started getting attached to the mouse, and we realized she looked kindof like a mouse. That’s when we started getting lazy with the problem and they probably started breeding. That’s how mice roll: fooling you with their good looks, then shagging eachother and infesting your house.

Mouse poo makes you sick. Maybe this is actually what I like about Mice. Let’s get this straight, I don’t like that mouse poo is linked to a deadly virus, but I do like that it gives me an excuse to kill them other than being freaked out.

The last thing I hate about mice is that they love piles of things. My room is made up of piles of things, which mice like to make their nest from. So now I have to rearrange my room to keep mice out? My parents could never get me to be cleaner, but all of a sudden I’m buying shelving and picking up clothes from the floor so my bedmates not a rodent? This seems unfair. It’s one thing for my parents to tell me to clean up, but to be forced into different habits by mice?

It seems like mice get a good deal. Free lodging and food. Different nesting spots to chose from. Eight hours of dark a night. I’m not so sure I feel so bad about this killing them thing. But, I do feel less bad then this creepest guy I stumbled on in a mouse forum who kept readers updated on the progress of his mouse murders.

He writes:

So far, the best luck i am having is with those regualr old 49 cent victory rat traps. Hell, i have caught now i think 6, and today i hear one trying to lick the peanut butter right off the already sprung trap with his brother dead caught in it! I took him out, put more butter on there and set it back where it was, not even 5 minutes later, seriously the other came back and was killed haha!

stupid mice, i can do this all day they never catch on. even when thier siblings are dying one right after another. hehehe

just wondering really if there is a good mouse repellant i could use outside or inside. I can take care of the ones that are here now, just dont want them to come back. My cat’s odor was the best, mice never even came to my block. but id rather have a better smelling house

He feels the need to come back and say this:

its amazing how stupid the are. theyre nothing more then eat sleep bump machines. i couldnt believe they watch another mouse die in a trap and then go right to that trap and lick off the leftover peanut butter. they dont even notice death.

And then this:
i think i scored a victory with the 49 cent victory traps, no bites last night at all.

i am really surprised a peta banger hasnt rung in and told me to use live traps yet, those are a joke! if i were to use live traps i would just flush them down the toilet anyway

anyone hear of those electroic traps? theyre like a box, and when the mouse goes in for food its zapped by voltage and the amps kill it… cool i thought… too much money compared to what im using though

Let’s just hope this dude sticks with mice. I started this post scared by rodents, but this guy is way scarier.