kat(e) and mouse

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on my couch watching a movie when I heard this funny sound coming from my radiator.

munchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunch

"Oh great," I thought, "I've got a mouse."

So I check out the radiator, the curtains, the little draft dodger I made out of fabric and rice (to keep the cold weather out when I need to stick my wireless receiver out the window to use the internet... ahem, thanks neighbors!) and I see nothing. But the sound persists.

munchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunch

I take to acting like the Clapper. Everytime I hear the sound, I clap, and it stops. (Mind you, this is a very disruptive way to watch a movie, but whatever, it's just me.)

munchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunchmunch(CLAP!)

That night, I go to bed, and leave a Test Piece of Cheese out, to see if it walks away the next day. (I'm pretty sure it ran.)

"Which of your cats is the best mouser?" I ask my friend Lisa, who has four cats, the next day.

"Oh, Bjorn, definitely. One day I came into the apartment to find all four cats [who don't get along] sitting next to each other at the radiator, and I just knew we had a mouse. Bjorn caught it, and tormented it for hours before it finally died. So, yeah, he's the best mouser."

"Can I borrow him?"

"Oh sure, yeah, he'd love that!"

So a few more days pass catlessly, and I go to put my receiver out the window again, and I notice that somone (and I'm not naming names) has munched a hole through the fabric of the draft dodger and has eaten a good two inches worth of rice. I immediately close up shop and shift the smorgasboard to a container in the kitchen.

No more munching. No more mouse.

Or so I thought.

I got home last night around 12:30 and really had to pee. So I doffed my coat, kicked off my shoes, ran straight for the bathroom and let out the girliest shriek I've heard in weeks.

There, in the middle of my bathroom floor, like an errant turd or cat-less hairball was my mouse. He looked like one of those scruffy cartoon guys who crawls through the desert on his hands and knees, croaking out, "agua" before he just collapses and dies. Or maybe, I thought, he's just sleeping. I stomped on the floor and said "HEY MOUSEY MOUSEY!" really loud near his ears just to make sure he wasn't going to wake up and charge me.

After a round of "ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod" and "where's my imaginary boyfriend!?" I realized I had two choices -- I could wake up my landlord at 12:30 and wait half an hour for him to put some clothes on and wake up enough to deal with the problem, or I could handle it myself.

I'm a strong, independent gal, I can do this, I thought. (But boy, do I wish I didn't have to, the girly-shrieker in me added.)

I turned on the light in the bathroom to better assess the situation, and the bulb blew. So now I had to clean up a DMC (dead mouse corpse) in the dark. Awesome. I got my little emergency light and hung it over the towel rack. That just created weird, spectre-like shadows that didn't help the situation.

I was really tempted to use my new spatula, but I didn't want death to linger on my pancakes, so I opted instead for my dustpan. I covered it in a layer of saran wrap, and grabbed an empty Luna Bar box from the recycling. With one deft swoop (which, in my mind, took forever) I flung the DMC into the box, and covered it with the lid.

Then I trotted down the stairs, holding this mousey coffin as far away from me as possible, chanting "gross, gross, gross, gross, gross" with every step. I deposited the box (and the mouse, and, adeptly, the saran wrap!) into the trash, put the lid on the can and walked away.

Then I peed. But only after I put on slippers. There was no way I was going to step in Death in my bare feet!

I'd like to say I feel like a stronger person for having had to do this, but really, I just feel kind of creeped out. The mouse was cute, I didn't want it to die necessarily, or if I did want it to die, I wanted it to be in a nice field somewhere, not in my bathroom. But more than anything else, I really hope this mouse was a HE mouse and that he was an orphan, a rebel, a solo-flyer.

Otherwise, I'm calling Bjorn.