Classic Posts: Kryptomice

a.k.a. "mailing it in..."

Seriously, though, when I had my old blog and decided to dismantle it to go anonymous and start over, I saved (via cut and paste into Word) the posts that either (a) were good or (b) took a lot of time or (c) felt like saving or whatever. This weekend the topic of mice / rats came up, and it reminded me of this story which happened to us that I posted about in April 2005.

Kryptomice:

So, it's amazing what the presence of some creatures who probably weigh 30 grams each can do to your world. Yes, they are cute in cartoons, but 6 little mice which are each not much bigger than a silver dollar each can turn your world upside down temporarily.

I'll keep the story short since things have started to return back to normal.

Last Monday (April 11th), my wife and I re-arranged our furniture and noticed some interesting little objects behind our couch. Turns out there were little mouse turds back there. We move our entertainment center, and there are mouse turds behind there.

(About three days earlier, Lisa saw a mouse dart under our stove but we both dismissed it as just a mouse that lived in the walls and got lost since we never noticed any holes, eaten food, or turds in our kitchen ever.)

We have our pet birds in our office which is adjoining to our living room. We move the bookcases in the office and find the motherload. There are mouse turds and hulled out sunflower seeds (what the birds eat) in a pile behind there. Panic and anxiety are setting in (since we haven't ever dealt with mice before). All of a sudden, a mouse jumps out from somewhere in our office and quickly scurries into our furnace closet...

(From here on, take note that the colloquialism "like a bitch" is a non-sexist, non-offensive colloquialism... kind of like how homosexuals shouldn't be offended when I say that George Bush is gay.)

Flashback: When I was 18, I lived at my mother's house and one of our pet cats brought in a (what we thought was dead) mouse and it ran around. I literally shrieked like a bitch and jumped on the coach yelling for my mother (I was 6'1", 200 pounds, my mother was 5'3" and much less) to get rid of it. Embarrassed, I never mentioned this little fit much (though my brother was sure to bring up occassionally).

Now, fast forward to the mouse in our office... I shriveled up and yelled in fear and panic again. For the second time in ten years, I shrieked like a bitch and crumbled in terror. Embarrassed again, but unable to stop myself, I was beside myself. We realized upon inspecting the room and the bird cages that the mice were actually going into the bird cages at night and stealing their food. A second mouse ran somewhere as we started to move furniture around and assess the extent of this situation.

However, the past week has slowly helped me conquer my phobia.

Disgusted and worried for our birds' health, we got the birds out of the house. We then started a war against the mice starting Tuesday night. We learned about the different types of mice traps. We determined that the mice are living (and presumably came into our apartment through) our furnace closet, which is in the hallway that leads to the office where the birds are. We cleaned obsessively. We baited all the places we saw mice shit on Tuesday night. We caught, in successive nights, 2, 1, 2, 1, and last night, no trace of mice anywhere. I think we are done with them (gauging from the amount of activity we saw in cleaned places the following night, and how it's dwindled each day this week). Last night, Saturday night, there was no activity anywhere and Friday night the last mouse was caught in the closet, with no sign of mouse activity anywhere else in the apartment.

We will not declare this situation "over" yet, but we are winding down. The birds have been staying elsewhere but will return this week at some point, once we are fairly confident that they will not have any more unwanted visitors.

I learned several things this week:

- mice are tiny but can move very fast
- like "Fear Factor", you can be de-sensitised to issues if you are forced to deal with them
- I can be a wimpy bitch about some things
- if left uncontrolled, mice droppings can cause health problems, especially in your pets. We are getting our birds checked out by the vet, just to be sure (though they seem ok)
- in cartoons, mice are cute and cuddly. In real life, they are rodents just a notch higher in the hierarchy than cockroaches. (in my opinion.)

5 COMMENTS:
Anonymous said...
I will confirm that Walt did, indeed, shriek like a horrified little girl. His shrieks, in fact, rivaled Fay Wray's in King Kong...particularly in pitch and duration. I will also confirm that this was a nightmare, and I hope that I never have to go through anything like this again. Apparently, vacuuming and cleaning every night in the bird room simply wasn't enough. Mice are crafty, nasty little buggers! Finally, I will add that despite Waltinitial shrieking, (and my concern that he would never return to our apartment again)he dealt with the trapping and freeing of the mice with great bravery! He did, indeed, live up to his heroic name. After all, every hero has his kryptonite...or in this case, kryptomice.
~ Walt's Wife

Joe said...
We had mice in my rowhouse in college. Because they breed so quickly, the only really effective way of getting rid of them is to remove all their food supplies and use traps in the meantime.

J said...
It's a shame that Cowboy (our snake) died last week. Otherwise I could have helped you...dispose of the mice.
In Walt's defense, re: shreiking like a bitch....
Even though I have no problem with my reptiles, I can't handle the rodents. Even when they come in cute boxes from the pet store. I've never been able to touch the rats/mice we fed to Cowboy.

Even when Cowboy decided he wasn't hungry and we had to care for a rat for over 3 weeks.

Even in a controlled environment where it is a pet mouse situation....one of those bastards get loose and I'm to be found standing on a chair, shreiking like a bitch.

Thank G-d I have a superhero girlfriend.

Walt said...
Update: no mice the past four days. Maybe we've gotten rid of them. For a little while, it seemed like some 80s movie where we are doing all this crazy stuff to get rid of these tiny mice.