keep your victims faceless...or headless

For those of you that know me, I believe I've made my disdain for mice well known. We all have our weak spots; some people are afraid of spiders, I know a guy who's terrified of grasshoppers for some reason, heck even Indiana Jones craps his pants at the sight of a snake. For me, those fuzzy little critters that some weirdos keep as pets make me insane. There is something really creepy about mice. Maybe it's their long segmented tail, or the fact that they are sneaky and move hella fast. In any case, they terrify me. I will scream when I see one. With that in mind, of course we had a mouse in our house a few months ago. Of course. And of course the mouse gave birth to a family of mice in our house.

My mother made the discovery first and told me that she saw a mouse run through our living room and behind the tv. I didn't want to believe her at first. I pretty much shut her out like I always do when she relayed this information to me. Of course I thought about it and felt a little wary when walking around the house, but luckily I didn't have any run-ins with the fucking thing like she did. Every day she would tell me about her most recent encounter with the mouse; she practically had a relationship with it. To this news, I would just cringe. Cringe and shut her out. You see, denial is one of my favorite ways of dealing with things. Well my cozy little bought of denial was shattered when she announced that one of the mice progeny was found dead by our lazy boy in the living room. Ack! I was sitting there last night! You mean I could have been chilling with a dead mouse next to me, completely oblivious to it's presence? Sick. Apparently our dog killed it, which surprised me because our dog is old and useless. She's about 13+ years old, but she managed to slaughter a baby mouse and I couldn't be happier. That was until later that night when I came face to face with mother mouse in the kitchen.

Having an idea that we would interface quite soon, because it's inevitable in those kind of close quarters, I tiptoed in there to put my plate in the dishwasher. Then suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I see this brown thing spring out from under the stove and fly under the dishwasher, where I was standing. I screamed bloody murder and ran away. I know I sound like a bitch ass, but you don't even understand my terror. I don't care that mice are probably more afraid of me, they are horrifying. I hate wild rodents. Opposums, rats, mice, whatever. They are the devil to me.

After this traumatizing confrontation with the mouse, you can imagine my high level of discomfort in my own house. I would actually call people and beg them to let me hang out at their houses meanwhile someone else came home, just so I wouldn't have to be alone with the mouse. My hatred for that stinking mouse was unparalleled. It was totally ruining my week! If you can't come home after a miserable day at work and relax without rabies infested mice running rampant throughout your house, then what's there left to believe in? I wanted that filthy animal dead! So I did something about it. I went to The Home Depot and got some of those glue traps. I heard they worked like a charm, and besides, the old school wood traps seemed a little cruel and archaic to me.

So I strategically place glue traps in the kitchen. After day 1 I come downstairs to observe any potential progress. Nothing happens.

Day 2: Nothing.

Day 3: Jack shit in my glue traps. All I've caught is some lint. That mouse is one tricky bitch. This makes me mad...mad like a beaver.

Day 4: One glue trap is missing.

Hmm. That's peculiar. Inclination leads me to the garage. I open the door and jump back in horror when I see the mouse stuck to the trap, sitting just outside the door. My mom must have woken up early, discovered it, and moved it out of the kitchen. It's twitching violently on the trap, desperately trying to free itself, but with no such luck. Shit man, I think to myself, that must suck. I stare at the mouse for a few minutes, watching it suffer in silence. For some reason I can't look away; I'm captivated by the atrociousness of it all. These past four days I've been waiting for this moment and now that it's here, I don't particularly feel like celebrating. The guilt sits heavy in my stomach, like a consumed carne asada burrito would at 2am after a binge drinking fest. Now that I really look at the mouse, it's actually kind of cute. I feel pretty sad watching it struggle, with its fur and tail plastered to that glue.

I manage to pull myself away from the spectacle that was occurring on my garage floor and go have breakfast. As I somberly shovel fruity loops into my mouth my mom descends into the kitchen and asks me if I've noticed the trapped rodent in our garage. Duhhh. How could I not? She begins to describe the eerie screeching noises the mouse was initially making when she first found it. This is the reason why she had to move it into the garage; it was so goddamn loud and she couldn't stand it. The thought of the mouse screaming relentlessly on the trap chilled me to the bone. What have I done?! First, my dog killed the mouse's baby and now we are torturing the mouse with slow death! I feel like such a barbarian. Turns out the glue traps are even worse than the wooden traps! Instant death is better than slow death, by far. I mean, what the hell do I do now? I can't exactly rip the mouse off the trap and set it free. I'm sure the quality of life won't be as high with a missing leg and tail. Shall I let the mouse just die slowly on the damn thing? Or should I smash it with a hammer and end it all right there and then? Whatever the case, that mouse was marked for death. Luckily for us, it was trash day.

My mother ordered me to throw the glue trap, with mouse and all, into the garbage bin before the trash man came. This was hard for me, because as I slowly inched towards the mouse, it struggled with more fury to free itself. Oh the humanity. I could hardly contain myself. "Why did you have to come here?!", I screamed. "Why couldn't you have stayed outside where you belong? Then I wouldn't have had to kill you or your baby!". More spastic twitching was about the only response the mouse could give me. So I managed to sift the glue trap into our trash bin, with the attached mouse side up so that it wouldn't be more uncomfortable than it probably was. I told the mouse that I was sorry, but it was either me or her, and this house wasn't big enough for the two of us. I watched sadly as the dump truck lifted our garbage receptacle and mercilessly emptied all its contents into the back. All I could picture was the chaos that surrounded that poor mouse as it was flipped and buried in garbage. If it didn't die of a shit attack, then it was probably crushed.

Moral of the story: keep your victims faceless/headless. It's easier to hate them and torture them without guilt that way. Buy the wooden traps. Pretty grim.