We have a little saying at my house:
Actually, I'm lying: I never even heard of that poem till I found it on a decorative plate at Value Village for $0.50, but it works, so I ain't gonna fight it. Right now I have a shitty living situation on my hands, and I am not sure how to deal with it. Wait, before I get to that, I should probably tell you about the house I live in so you can get a better idea of what I am dealing with. I have two room-mates, both about the same age as myself. I would like my own place, but as anyone who lives in a big city knows, rent ain't cheap (especially not in Toronto, where decent 1-bedroom apartments rent for $1200/month). And co-habiting isn't so bad; our house is huge, so we barely ever see each other. We have a two-storey home in The Beaches, a really quiet, small neighborhood in the east end of Toronto. It may not be the coolest neighborhood, but it's safe and quiet and our rent is fairly cheap and our house is nice and clean, so no complaints.
So yeah, there has always been three people in our house, up until about 1 month ago. Now we have three gainfully-employed, rent-paying room-mates and one unemployed, mooching degenerate. Fuck him. He eats our food, is fucking filthy, he's swarming with a shit-ton of diseases, shits wherever he wants, and his only job is to piss me off. He moved in without asking and we are having a hell of a time getting rid of him. I think he's been here long enough to claim squatter's rights (pfft...typical). Now, this would be where I would make a joke about how I'm obviously describing my out-of-work, bum of an ex-boyfriend, but I just can't; you could at least call the cops on someone like that. Maybe take up your shit with Judge Judy. But what I'm describing is way worse than a freeloading guy. People, this is Def Con 5...we have a mouse.
Editor's Note: For all the assholes giving me a serious case of the side-eyes right now and mumbling some catty shit about me over-reacting, well you can shove a mouse up your ass, because having a mouse in your house is fucking nonsense.
I first noticed the mouse in the garbage. He was perched on the side eating the remains of a sandwich (hey, no judgment - we've all been there). So I hopped on my bike and rode down to the little hardware store to buy a snap-trap. I wish I could say that I chose the snap-trap because I knew what I was doing, but really it was just because I am cheap and wasn't willing to eradicate the mouse with anything over $1.50. The saddest part was that I had to get the guy to show me how to set it a couple of times, and he kept setting it off with his fingers. He was the sweetest Korean man and every time he would set it off, he would go "okay, okay, rets try dis again..." and I would go "NO! It's cool, I got it! You're going to break your fingers!" And then he would put up his hand in the "Oh, but I insist" way, and would proceed to set it again, and snap it again on 1 or 2 fingers. "OH! OW. You think you get it, and then it snap on you, and it hurt so much...so, so much...okay, rets try dis again".
So I went home, set the trap, baited it with peanut butter, and left it behind the trash can under the sink. The next morning I checked to see that the trap was okay and that it hadn't flipped itself or gotten set-off by someone throwing some garbage in and missing the can. I found the trap flipped-over, and was instantly pissed-off. "Fuck me, can't people in this house be more careful?" Then I looked closer and saw a foot. HELLS TO THE YES, BOBBY B!!! I caught the mouse! Now, the obvious thing to do would be to put on some gloves and pluck that furry bastard from his wood-and-wire hell, but I like to do things in the most difficult, intrusive way possible. So I called my only male room-mate to dispose of the body. He's originally from Brazil, where I hear they have cockroaches the size of your shoes, so I didn't think he'd mind handling a tiny dead mouse. He obliged, but winced through the whole ordeal like a 50's housewife. After Betty Draper had thrown out the mouse, I re-set the trap with some more peanut butter and left it again behind the garbage can. You know, just in case one of the mouse's bereaved family members decided to seek vengeance on me. Weeks passed, no more mouse. Home free!
This brings us to this morning. I'm sitting on my bed watching zit videos on YouTube (as I usually do on Saturday mornings) and I see a shadow pass by my dresser. I lean down to check it out, as I am sure it was a mouse (but I want to be sure) and sure enough this shit-for-brains mouse is staring at me from under my dresser. I tried to catch him, but he ran. He ran all around my room, and then hid behind a bookshelf. I frantically pulled the shelf out to get him, trapping him on both ends with the large rock I use as a door stop and my collection of very heavy VICE magazines. As it turns out, mice can hop over things, and he hopped over the rock and ran into my room-mates bedroom. I followed him in and watched him scurry into his hole like the cowardly little bastard that he is. I wasn't sure what to do, so I stuck the vacuum down the hole and tried to suck him out. FAIL. Didn't work. So I just patched the hole with silly putty until I can think of a better solution.
I went on with my day. I made lunch, did some laundry, worked for a bit on some editing work. Then around 8pm I saw another shadow from the corner of my eye in the kitchen. This time, the mouse ran from the fridge to under the dishwasher. Fuck mouse, why you joke me?? I double-checked the trap under the sink and found it set, but totally stripped of any bait. What? Did the mouse do that? I re-set it, of course, but what if he does it again? In case you were wondering, this is what the set-up looks like:
Look, I don't pretend to know anything about mice and their social acceptance of proper habitats, but does this not look like the mouse ghetto to you? Any mouse hanging out around here is definitely either a drug-dealer or a schizophrenic or something. Definitely a mouse who was dealt a shitty hand in its youth, that's for sure. Anyways, I'm crossing my finger that the trap gets him, but there is a good chance it wont. What if the mouse is wise to my game? What if he is allergic to peanuts? What if he is extremely malnourished and he isn't heavy enough to spring the trap? I know that I should be exploring a few other avenues in order to rid myself of this unwanted house-mooch, so I did a little research. Here is what I have so far:
Problem: There's a mouse in my house!
Solution: Buy a cat
Okay, so when I first moved in to this house, we had a tabby named Rick James (see post on outing my neighbor's cat). His owner was my room-mate Shannon, but then she decided to move out and take him with her (obviously). Anyways, while we had Ricky, we never ONCE saw a mouse. Now, I don't know if it's because he would catch them and eat them, or because the mice just instinctively knew there was a cat nearby, but we didn't have a mouse problem. So the obvious solution would be to get another cat; yeah, you would think that, but allow me to present this equation to you:
Mooches food + tears up your shit + dumps in the house = Mouse
Mooches food + sheds hair on your shit + dumps in the house = Cat
See what I mean? It's like I'm replacing one crappy animal with another, except that when you go on vacation, you don't need to beg a friend to house-sit the mice.
Problem: There's a mouse in my house!
Solution: Put down some glue traps
Okay, so before I have the PETA people on my ass, I would like to stress that I don't like to see animals die. Don't get me wrong - animals are tasty and make for great car interior material and, if properly prepared, their penises cure what ails ya, but I do not like watching them die. This is why I like snap-traps; because by the time I get to them, they are already up in Rodent Heaven, scampering around with Jesus and Stuart Little. Glue traps aren't as gracious; they make you hear the mouse die. GROSS...but very effective. All the mouse needs to do is run over the trap (they can't see it - it looks like the floor) and they get stuck. Well, sometimes they are feisty and they rip their own feet off to escape (that's some Rambo shit). But 9 times out of 10, they just wait there for you to come and drop a boot or a can of Chunky soup on their heads to put them out of their misery. Now, you all know that I love gross stuff, but I am not sure if I could kill a mouse with my own bare hands.
Problem: There's a mouse in my house!
Solution: Remove it in the most humane way possible
Um, are you fucking kidding me? NEXT.
Problem: There's a mouse in my house!
Solution: Rat poison
This is apparently a nearly fool-proof plan because Warfarin is like surf-n-turf to mice, so they will always ALWAYS run and gorge themselves on it. So that's the upside. The downside is that they then run back to their homes to lay on the couch with the top button of their pants undone watching re-runs of Seinfeld...where they die. The bad part is their homes are never right in the middle of your kitchen floor, where you can see them, but in the walls. And these motherfuckers STANK. One time I had a mouse die in my bedroom wall and it smelled like someone had put potpourri sachets of feces in my underwear drawer and lit my dresser on fire. Using Warfarin to get rid of the mice is like making a pact with the Devil; he'll get rid of the mice, but there's always a catch.
So yeah - if you can tell me how to get rid of the mice (mouse, mice...there's definitely more than one of those assholes) then please, PLEASE leave your suggestions in the comments, or email me at skipraid@gmail.com
Whoever gives me the best mouse-massacre'ing suggestion will win a prize. I haven't decided what the prize will be yet, but in all likelihood, it's gonna be a dead mouse. Goodnight everybody!
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