The Mouse Attack of '09

I'm just going to get right into the story. Kitty and I found a mouse in our room.

I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of experiencing that delightful surprise. Let me assure you, there is nothing cute about mice. Jerry and Mickey can bite me because real mice are the absolutely terrifying.

I surprised myself a little with my reaction. I actually did the cliché Shriek-and-climb-up-on-a-chair-where-the-mouse-can't-get-you Routine. Don't laugh until you too are on your hands and knees with a flashlight in one hand and a cereal box in the other trying to scare the mouse out from under your bed. I will never again make fun of the women on the chairs. It's a perfectly normal reaction.

It was all such a blur. A blur with a huge adrenaline rush. One minute I was reading about the Maritime economy in the 1850s (for my history exam tomorrow, not for fun. I do have standards.) and the next, Kitty's shrieking and pulling her legs up onto her chair and frantically pointing at the ground.

Kitty: Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!

Me: What? What?

Kitty: Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod! Ew! Ew!

Me: What? WHAT? Nouns, woman! Give me something!

At this point, I'm already freaking out. When someone's freaking out about something you can't see, it's almost always a bug. My first reaction? Oh please don't be a cockroach...or a tarantula.

Finally Kitty manages to say: MOUSE! Oh my god, Ve! There's a mouse in our room!

Ve: Where? Where? (For some reason, I like to say things twice when I'm freaking out.)

She points under her desk and suddenly I see it dart out and it's sitting right next to Kitty's bag. I'm freaking out. She's freaking out. In hindsight, we were so stupid! We should have trapped it right then and there while we could still see it! But what did we do? We screamed for help.

You know what I love about residence life? How nobody will come to your rescue if you scream, "THERE'S A MOUSE IN OUR ROOM! HELP US!" People are just suddenly busy and unresponsive. I hate them all! I'm planning to get a particularly resonant set of pots and pans one day and just go clanging up and down the halls at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. That'll teach those good-for-nothing people on my floor! Useless. All of them! Useless!

The only thing that happens after our screaming is the mouse runs out. I get up a little higher on my chair (like that's going to make it better) and the mouse dives under Kitty's bed. Kitty and I are a little smarter this time. I grab an old cereal box. All we had to do was to trap the mouse, slide it out the door and release it into the wild!

Well, that was the plan anyway.

What actually happened was another 30 minutes of clanging around the room looking for the mouse. There was no way we were going to bed with the knowledge of that mouse running around in our room. All this with our history exam starting in 11 hours. Isn't it great how life throws these curve balls at you? It's more like throwing flaming bowling balls at your while all you have a tissue to protect you. But I digress.

After lots of hunting and crawling on our hands and knees, we find the mouse under my bed. I didn't even ask at that point how it got there. You have no idea what it's like to simultaneously want to find something desperately while hoping it doesn't dart out and leap onto your face. I scare it behind my desk and I manage to chase it out behind our fridge.

We thought we had him cornered at that point. Kitty was all ready with a large plastic storage container to trap the mouse (a much better mouse-catching apparatus than my flimsy cereal box). Unfortunately for us, mice have an annoying way of squeezing themselves into small places. Our mouse disappeared under our fridge.

I took the cereal box and tore it open so that it's one long piece of cardboard and I slid it under the fridge. Kitty's still waiting with the box. I try not to think about the cardboard squishing the mouse and getting it stuck under our fridge where it can decompose nice and slowly.

Thankfully the mouse runs out and Kitty's got it trapped under the box. We take about five minutes to "Ew!" and "Gross!" at the mouse before we start sliding it out the door. After a few painful steps, we decide to slide the cereal box under the box so it's not as...rough of a ride for the mouse.

At this point, I was pushing the box towards the door while Kitty was in front making sure it doesn't get out. Suddenly, we lost the mouse. We have no idea where it went. I thought it was under the cardboard and so I start pushing forward again...slowly until I see Kitty's face. She had her hand over her mouth and her face was absolutely horrified.

"Stop!" she sputtered and I automatically froze. Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead. "You squished it, Ve. Oh my god. It's dead."

I really don't want to look at the box but it had to be done. I take a look and I see the mouse on its back pressed up against the back corner. I was a little grossed out (more than before) and I backed away. I couldn't think of anything to say. Kitty looked like she was going to cry. She nudged the box just to try to flip it over or something.

The mouse jumped up and started bouncing around inside the box. It was going ballistic! For a second I thought it had cracked. But there it was! Alive! We both exhaled. Was it relief? I don't really know. Maybe. The only thing worse than a live mouse is a dead mouse. We pressed on.

There was a second problem. There's a tiny ridge on the floor at the doors leading to the "foyer" (it's really just a little space between the main doors and the doors to our floor). If we pushed the box over the ridge, there would be a gap and the mouse would definitely get out again. We tried sliding more cardboard under it to make a ramp but it was no good.

We went with my idea: push the box over the ridge, let the mouse out and quickly trap it again. It wasn't great. But it was a plan.

By now, a girl on our floor was taking out garbage and she was staring at the box looking disgusted. She's just watching. Useless. Another guy that we never see, Roderigo, showed up. This is only the second time I've seen him since September. He's in fourth floor and no one ever sees him. On a floor of less than 20 people, that's quite a feat. But back to the story.

These two people both walked by and just stared at use. Real helpful. This was also the time that 10 people decided to walk by our floor. They weren't really in the way. One guy yelled, "Cockroach?"

"Mouse," I replied. We kept moving. This was hardly the time for polite small talk.

We were so close to the last door. Kitty and I threw all caution to the wind and just slid the box as quickly as we could all the way out the door and lifted it up. The mouse stood outside for a moment, almost frozen in one spot. It was kind of unexpected after all that crazy jumping around he was doing in the box. For a second, I thought he was going to turn around and run back inside but he slid under the open door (doesn't think to go around it) and disappears into the snow.

Kitty and I vacuumed like fiends. Our room is now spotless. I think it's the cleanest it's ever been since we moved in.

I now hate mice. I used to think they could be kind of cute. Now, I have no sympathy whatsoever. Kitty and I will just have to be extremely careful to the point of being anal about food. And if people come to visit, there is no way they will be allowed in with food, especially something with crumbs.

You can call me excessive. I don't care because I am NEVER doing that again.

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. I have an exam in 8 hours and 43 minutes and I don't know how I'm going to remember anything as mundane as the Rebellion of 1837 after what I've just been through.

We need to get a cat.