Mice

Mice are an every day occurrence at camp. Before I moved my office, I used to start every day by bringing my garbage can outside and releasing the mouse (or mice) that had fallen in overnight and were scratching around. The kitchen and health center are both kept very clean and mouse free, my house, the staff house and cabins are all pretty clear of mice, but many of the other buildings have mouse visitors regularly, so, at this point in life, it's not a big deal to me to see a mouse.

Last Spring, before heading off to camp, I had a ferocious battle with the smartest mouse on the planet who was happily living in my kitchen and making me crazy. My experiences at camp have made me pretty tolerant of vermin (probably more so than is normal), but a mouse in a kitchen is not acceptable and a mouse that destroys box after box of Costco sized bulk groceries had to die.

Last night I was at my boyfriend's house and as we sat together in the living room, we saw a flash of brown fur scurry across the kitchen floor and under the oven. Ugh! Another mouse! I will never escape!

BF's parents were over and so the four of us discussed mouse trap options. I had tried, unsuccessfully to use a live trap to humanely capture and relocate my mouse. When that failed, I set several of the standard bait and snap traps. As I mentioned above, I had the smartest mouse alive and he managed to avoid those as well, so eventually I resorted to poison, which I really didn't want to do, but successfully left me mouse-free.

BF is a fan of the sticky traps. I think they are the least humane option of all because once the mouse is caught, you just throw it away, stuck, but still alive.

As we had this discussion, I excused myself to use the bathroom. The living room leads to a little cove (not even enough space to be called a hallway) which has doors for two bedrooms, a small linen closet and the bathroom. The living room light was on, but not the light in that area, so it was kind of dark.

In a split second (although, in my memory, I can remember every millisecond), I realized the mouse was sitting in the cove. I squeaked (in a very annoying girly startled way) and jumped out of the way, but in doing so, I startled the mouse, who also flinched. As we both moved, my foot (I was wearing shoes) landed on top of the mouse, and I could feel a sickening crunch.

At that point, I made a louder squeak and said, "oh my gosh, oh my gosh". When I turned on the light, there was a long streak of blood and a flattened mouse. I continued to squeak "oh my gosh, oh my gosh" until BF arrived with the dustpan and broom. Except that instead of cleaning it up, he just danced around and started making sissy noises, which snapped me back into reality. I grabbed the broom and dustpan and elbowed him out of the way. I scooped up the little body, saying, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm an animal lover!", told BF to clean up the crime scene mess I'd left, and went outside to throw the mouse in the garbage can.

BF doesn't have a mouse anymore.

A few thoughts-

I keep having terrible flashbacks of the crunch. That was awful.

If that scenario had happened and I wouldn't have had shoes on, I think I would have fainted.

If I had intentionally tried to step on a mouse, I would never, in a million years, been able to be quick enough to catch it. That was a fluke- we startled each other, had the same reaction and panic knocked both of us into the exact same place.

I feel really terrible about being a killer, however, of all the mouse-removal options we'd discussed, I think this was the quickest, least painful, most humane way for him to go. So I guess I should take comfort in that.