Given all the mouse-related Google searches that lead random Internet wanderers here ("mouse+feces+photo" and "mouse+crushed+by+woman+high+heel" are typical), you would think I'd
devote more time to writing about this blog's namesake. So here's one stab at
it -- though not, sorry, with a sexy stilletto.
As of tonight, my total mouse body count to date is six. Not
atypical for a New York City tenement, and not bad for a three-year-plus time span, but unsettling
nonetheless, especially when I think of all their luckier relatives.
Thanks to the trusty D-Con Ultra-Set Covered Snap Trap loaded with
peanut butter and parmesan (which remains, in my vast experience, the only
extermination method that really works), I just came home to another victim.
This saddens me, it creeps me out, it makes me feel guilty and icky and angry
at the universe all at once. I'm sure there's a German word for this.
I hate having to kill the little guys. I'm not unsympathetic
to their cause. While a glimpse of one scurrying across my floor sends me into
barely-contained hysterics, I'm enough of an animal lover to recognize a
certain charm in these clever little creatures, disease vectors though they may
be. And it's just awful to see a dead mammal of any sort, let alone to be the
agent of dispatch.
Leading a sheltered and fortunate life, I guess, I spent a
solid three decades never seeing an expired mammal in any form other than road
kill. I haven't even been to a funeral. This all changed a few years ago, when
I stroked the soft grey fur of my faithful kitty companion on a veterinarian's
table in Carrboro, NC. Aside from the emotional horror of
losing someone I loved so dearly, there was a shock totally new to me, seeing a
body at one moment quick with life, and the next stiff and drained of energy. You
can read and hear about it most of your life, but there’s no way to prepare for
what this is like. It seems magical, this transformation -- one minute she was
there, and the next, well, as the vet put it, "she's gone." And she
really was -- just suddenly there/not there in a way that transcended the
physical.
But I didn't mean to get all metaphysically gloomy on you;
this is a blog, for goodness' sake. The reason I bring this up is that upon my
return from that terrible vet visit down South, I came home to find the stiff
tail of my first mouse victim sticking out of the D-Con Covered Trap I'd set
before I left. This was after I'd abandoned all hope for any sort of “humane”
trap; those just hadn't attracted the visitors I knew were roaming my kitchen.
But I don't think I'd really expected this murderous trap to work, either; I
was just going through the motions, as I was with most everything during that
sad time.
Anyway, the tail. I couldn't help noticing that its silvery
color was not dissimilar to that of my departed friend's fur. And the stiffness
of it, the horror of death, the unfairness of it all -- it was all too much.
Working up the courage to deal with the unpleasant disposal, I steeled myself
by thinking of my Lithuanian great-grandmother, who fled her village to travel,
alone, to Boston (via Amsterdam, via a German prison) at age 13, and who found
her beloved husband taken by an aneurysm in the middle of the night at his
upholstery shop, a few decades later. I reminded myself that Libby had to deal
with plenty of dead mice and worse during her lifetime, and damnit, here I was
on the Upper East Side of Manhattan armed with a fresh pair of yellow rubber
gloves and a supply of plastic bags -- I could deal with this. I still try to
apply this trick, to become mercenary and tough, but it never really gets any
easier.
Guilt aside, it’s the psychological aspect of an infestation
that gets me. It’s no good pretending I haven’t seen a mouse dart between my
kitchen and hall closet when I suspect I have. And it’s no good pretending the
brown specks on my stovetop are charred bits of rice. These denial strategies
only leave me filled with more despair when the inevitable true sighting occurs
(a highlight so far being the cute little mouse butt and tail I saw leaping out
of my Calphalon pot full of leftover rice to disappear back into the stove last
year).
Really, the only thing that allows me to cope is a little
trick my boyfriend invented to comfort me, which is to imagine these creatures
as sort of cartoony and cute visitors. “Imagine,” he'll say, “all these little
guys dressed up in tiny marching-band outfits, the drum guy, the guy with the
baton, all their funny hats, filing through your apartment, a Mouse Jamboree!”
Then he'll hum a little tootle-y Mouse Jamboree song and I'll laugh and, at
least temporarily, feel a sense of peace and fondness for these silly
characters. It works, really. The guy can make me laugh myself out of any
problem.
... Until nights like this one, when I get home from work,
alone, casually glance at the trap in the kitchen, and see yet another stiff
tail. I’m not in the mood to deal with it and I’m not in the mood to laugh
about it and I’m not going to call anyone else to help me deal with a problem
humanity has managed to cope with for centuries. Instead, I’m just going to sit here
blogging about it for a while, and then maybe toast the latest fallen Jamboree
member with a glass of sauvignon blanc. R.I.P., little city mouse.
