Oh GAWD! Now That I've Got It... What Do I Do With It?

Thursday morning I turned on my dishwasher. All the water that should have been making my dishes spotless, instead was making my basement a rain forest. I suspect that a mousie chewed a hose. Maybe, maybe not. But for way too long I've been in denial about the tell-tale signs. Oh no... can't be. Huh-uh. Not MY house. I don't see any; therefore, there must not be any. And I'm sure if there IS any rodent activity they're way cute Mickeys and Minnies that are fine. Really. Just fine. No problem.

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off. Those little dark rice thingies are mouse turds. Yuk. I opened my eyes and admitted it. Friday night Scott looked at the dishwasher and deemed the holey hose a job for someone who does plumbing for a living. When I revealed my Unholy Secret, he did not look aghast, he did not say "You have WHAT???" He simply apprised me that mice love peanut butter when we bought four mousetraps at the grocery store. (Doesn't that seem kind of disgusting that they sell mousetraps in the same place they sell food?)

I told him my Other Rodent Story. When I lived in Sacramento, a rat took up residence in my garage. Just as with the mice at my current residence, I was willing to co-habitate in peace and denial UNTIL its behavior went one step too far. When I got the box that contained my fabulous robot costume out of the rafters, it was gnawed and sullied beyond redemption. At that moment I declared war on the rat.

But with what weapons would I triumph? I usually side with humane treatment of animals, but to use some catch-and-release method would only make it someone else's problem. The old-fashioned traps seemed like the best solution, except their size and G-forces made me certain I would lose a hand before it had any chance at the rat. I settled on glue traps and set them out on a Friday night.

All weekend I waited for the rat to get its due. Nothing. Then Monday morning as I sashayed out to the garage wearing suit and heels for work and prepared to get into my car, I heard a skittering. There in front of the car was a rat on a glue-trap skateboard. As I was contemplating what to do next, my cat came into the garage and pounced on the rat. (Oh sure, now that he's easy game and after my robot costume is history.... Thanks, Sparkle.) The glue trap and rat stuck to her head and she began doing a wild dance about the garage with her odd new hat. It would have been funny if I weren't running late for work and getting a little testy at this entire menagerie and its collective bad behavior. I finally got the rat/glue trap combo off Sparkle, but then she grabbed it and ran under a bush. I turned the hose on her (not that I wanted to deprive her of a tasty snack, but I had just spent a fortune to have her dewormed), she left the scene, and I inspected the rat. It was bloodied and didn't look the least bit good on its glue bed. But it showed no signs of dying. Despite the slow, horrible death it deserved for fucking up my costume, I couldn't leave it like that. So I whacked it several times with a shovel before depositing it in the garbage. Case closed. Costume avenged.

Last night I set the four mousetraps, but not before clipping my own fingers with them several times in the process. I laced the "pedal" with peanut butter as advised and then put two in the basement and two in the garage. This evening I inspected four sparkling, peanut butter-free mousetraps. I had somehow set them so solidly, the entire mouse colony could have held a cotillion on each trap without springing it. I put more peanut butter on each pedal. I resnapped my own fingers several more times. Finally, I reset them as delicately as possible and put them at their stations.

I just looked in the garage and saw what looked like a mouse with the temerity to be feeding at the pedal as though it were a trough. Then I realized its head is under the springy thingy. Its eyes are open. I don't know if it's dead or merely not moving. Holy crap, what do I do now? Okay, yes this was the point of the whole exercise. But I didn't think that far ahead. Do I liberate the victim to its final resting place and reload the trap to kill another day? Ergh. At two traps for a dollar, I think I will be utterly wasteful and let it accompany its victim into eternity.... Hmmmm. Upon further thought, I will employ the Scarlett O'Hara Strategy of Mouse Disposal and wait until tomorrow to make my deposit into the River Styx of trash barrels. What's the hurry? It's eternity after all.