God Help Me, It's More Mouse Blog

I might as well change the name of this thing to Mouseblog. Or flyblog - I haven't even been talking about the plague of flies. I swear it's like I'm living in some cut rate version of the Amityville Horror. I saw that movie when I was about 11 and it left a big impression on me: namely, that if a house ever starts dripping blood down the walls and shrieking Get Out at me, I'll leave. Without question. Without passing go and collecting my $200, even. A dumpster would be preferable. That may be why my whole vermin obsessed existence is getting me down so. I probably should leave the mice & the flies to their own devices & go get myself a nice clean little trailer in Enka-Candler.

Last night was serious horror movie time. I woke up around 4:00 am, convinced I had just felt a mouse crawl over my belly. I woke up hard, too, this was not one of those long slow dreamy half awake things. No, this was immediate full red alert: there is a mouse in the bed, all systems go. I leapt up and started tossing the covers around wildly.

My bed is a queen sized futon on a wooden Ikea frame. At the moment it has a rather lurid bottom sheet with bright pink circles on it, a flannel top sheet (white, with green bears and pine trees) and a twin size comforter that has blue sky and clouds on one side and Pooh Bear on the other side. Also, three or four pillows with assorted cases. You can see that I am one of those incredible Martha Stewart type housekeepers. Mostly, I sleep naked - no, this is not to freak you out, this is important information for this part of the story. So there I am, stark naked standing on my bed last night, holding the comforter up and thinking, "That was a dream, right? Just a terrible, terrible dream -" when I see movement under the sheet at the end of the bed. So I leapt from the bed to the dresser, tossing the comforter on the cedar chest while I was at it.

I have this fabulous new software - Artrage - so I will draw this for you momentarily. Actually, no, I won't. I tried, but it's too lame. However it is extremely cool freeware and you should go download it.

I really, really did not want to pick that sheet up and see what was under it. Fortunately, I didn't have to, because the little gray mouse came scurrying out from under it and promptly went under the pile of foam on the floor that used to be on my bed but then the dog peed on it (Jackson does this occasionally, usually in his sleep, yes he is the worst dog in the world, I quite agree) and then while I was drying it out he chewed it up so I just left it there and disappeared. The mouse, that is, not the dog or the foam. Actually, the damn dog wasn't in the bedroom, which was unusual. Theo inevitably sleeps under my bed. Jackson usually sleeps on the couch.

So then I realized that my worst fears had come true and there had been an actual goddamn mouse in my bed, scrambling around on my naked body and I am proud of the fact that instead of dropping dead at that exact point, or screaming for hours and hours or lapsing into a catatonic state, I actually kept a clear head as I ran the hell out of my room and to the kitchen, looking for god knows what. Well I was looking for a cat, but I knew that was hopeless. So I tried to get the dogs to go in there, but they sensed that this was not routine, and completely refused to go anywhere near me. I think they thought that possibly one of them had peed on the bed again, or something: okay, I grant you that often, when I show up stark naked and gibbering in the living room in the middle of the night, calling the dogs in a deceptively sweet tone of voice, it doesn't bode well for them. Sometimes it even leads to negative reinforcement. Dogs are such damn behaviorists.

I went and got a mousetrap out of the kitchen cabinet, and loaded it with peanut butter. I had to set it off first, by poking it with a fondue fork, and then it was a new jar of peanut butter which was really hard to open. Of course it was. It was 4:00 am and I was naked in the kitchen with a mousetrap, a jar of solidly sealed peanut butter and a fondue fork. Weaker souls would have given in to insanity at this point. I took the trap into my room, which made the mouse come out from under the foam and scurry under my bed. I watched it. I watched the little fucker run under my bed, along the wall just like the thing on how to get rid of mice that I read on the internet said it would. Which I can't find right now, but you get the idea. So I gingerly put the trap down, grabbed my library book (Peter S. Beagle, you can't go wrong) and went to sleep in M's room. Not long after that I heard the trap snap. But I didn't want to deal with it, so I didn't go back to look. That, as it turned out, was a dumb move. It took me a long time to get back to sleep, because I kept thinking that the mouse was after me again. I also thought for a long time about the goddamn cats and how they are fucking importing rodents, since I have no doubt whatsoever but that the mouse in the bed was the same mouse that Barbieri brought in through the bathroom window yesterday night.

Now it is Saturday morning. I found the sprung trap in the hallway, but no mouse. Goddamn it. This leads me to suspect that Jackson, smelling peanut butter, took the trap this morning early. It also makes me think that probably the mouse had some peanut butter last night and walked away. So when the cats came in for their breakfast this morning, I locked them in my room. Hopefully they're dealing with the mouse right now. God I hope so. And yet I am afraid to look. So now what do I do? I'm wearing the pajamas I grabbed last night off the cedar chest and my glasses. And here is a terrible irony: I am wearing my Mighty Mouse pajamas! I didn't even realize this until just now, but yes, my pajamas have Mighty Mouse in all his coked up splendor dancing around. Great. The glorification of vermin. Meanwhile, my glasses make me dizzy but I'm afraid to go in and get my contacts; I want to take a shower & put on real clothes but I don't dare. I'm just kind of generally afraid to go in my bedroom at all. AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!