WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AND NOT PETA-FRIENDLY.
“Hey,
can you come downstairs for a sec? I think I heard something in the kitchen and
it’s that season again,” Terry whispered to me in the hallway when I came out
of Danny’s room.
“Really?
Where?” I asked.
“By
the sink.”
“But
everything stuffed with steel wool and they can’t eat through steel wool.” We
quietly crept downstairs and then stopped in the dimly-lit kitchen listening.
Nothing. “Did you check?”
“No”
“Well,
flip the lights on at least,” I said before tapping my fingers on the sink
cabinet door. Still nothing. Terry held back, this was my territory. I waited a
bit then flung the cabinet open and peeked inside. “I don’t see anything.”
“Well,
I heard something.”
“I don’t see any evidence, and there is usually evidence.” I pulled out the garbage can and stuck my head inside for a closer look. “They’d have to be nuts to try and eat their way in here.”
“I don’t see any evidence, and there is usually evidence.” I pulled out the garbage can and stuck my head inside for a closer look. “They’d have to be nuts to try and eat their way in here.”
“Maybe
it was nothing then.”
“Do
you want me to set the trap? I can set the trap.”
I didn’t. We have no peanut butter and I couldn’t find my
mouse traps. Plus, I’m pretty sure that at this point the neighborhood mice are
genetically preprogrammed not to enter our house.
I hate pests. I see anything that crawls and I jump across the
room and scream like a banshee until Terry calmly comes over and steps on
whoever managed to crawl into my personal space. But vermin is my area of
“expertise”. The only way vermin leaves me is in a garbage bag.
My first experience was when I was about 11-12. Russian
winter. I woke one morning to go to school and discovered that the door to the
kitchen was barricaded with a large piece of plywood attached by carpenter’s
clamps. I watched as my dad – still in his winter pajamas and a large striped
terry-cloth robe – appeared in the kitchen doorway, stepped over his barricade,
looked at my puzzled look and simply said “mice.” I think I ate breakfast in my
room that morning. By the time I got home from school he’s caught 14.
There was no time for him to get to a store for traps, the
mice were coming from everywhere. The building was 17 stories tall and had a
garbage disposal shaft that ran through all 17 floors. The shaft was by the
elevators, and our kitchen (and every unit like ours above or below) shared a
wall with the shaft. On the first floor there was a garbage room with an open
dumpster sitting right below the shaft. This was the 80s, plastic garbage bags
did not exist in Russia until 21st century. The communism had to
collapse first in order for Russian garbage to go into a garbage bag. Garbage
was dumped into a bin whose bottom was lined with newspaper to soak up the wet
stuff. We dumped it out into the disposal every night. And all that kitchen
garbage sat on the first floor in an open dumpster, breeding rodents that were
extremely talented vertical climbers as we all found out.
To this day we think something spooked them. Because, all of
a sudden, they all bolted up the shaft and into everyone’s homes in matter of
hours. There was no time for traps. There was just a broom with a very long
handle and a very heavy screwdriver. Broom to trap, the butt of the screwdriver
to whack. They came, they were eliminated, and they left down the same
dumpster. No. 15 however decided to take in a piano concert beforehand.
I was half way through my hours-long practice when, out of
the corner of my eye, I saw a little grey shape run out from under the piano
and attempt to hide under my bed. I yelled out for my dad and jumped on the bed
to rescue my stuffed animals. My dad came charging in, broom and screwdriver at
the ready. There was a scuffle in the corner of the room, and then I was
ordered to leave. A minute later, a dead mouse was carried out by its tail into
the garbage disposal. Later that evening, my dad told me of his hunting
technique. Not a single mouse ever appeared after that day.
It was our first year of marriage and we were living in a
60s North Shore townhome – with floor-to-ceiling drafty windows and rusted
plumbing – when I started to
notice dirt from a potted plant all over the side table. I would clean it up,
but it would appear again by the time we would return from work. One morning,
while enjoying my tea on our white denim couch before work, I noticed that
there was something strange inside the potted plant. I looked closely and found
almonds stuffed into the dirt. What? Almonds? The potted plant was on the left
of the couch, the almond bowl (yes, I had a bowl of nuts sitting on a side
table) was on the right of the couch… I looked at the bowl… There were nuts
missing, the only person that would eat them was me and I didn’t eat any in a
while… I slowly sat up and put my cup of tea down. Nuts were moved from right
to left… Suddenly I noticed a tiny spec on top of a pristine white couch cushion.
I looked closely… Dirt. I bolted from the couch in cold sweat. Mice!
The mouse would take an almond I conveniently left out from
a bowl, march on top of the couch and stash it into the potted plant. And it’s
been doing it for days. I called in sick to work that day and declared war.
Brillo pads were stuffed into every crevice and possible entry point and I
spread out two boxes of little green poison cubes. Nuts and any other open food
were completely eliminated and the poor couch got soaked in Lysol. We sat out
traps, but by that point no one came. I even tracked down the source: an
abandoned office building next door that a developer used as a lumber dump. One
phone call in a very sweet, but oh so convincing, voice and the lumber dump was
dealt with. We missed one thing though.
Four years later, while moving we heard rattling inside our
subwoofer. We watch a lot of action movies with full-on surround sound, so I
just thought that perhaps the vibrations from all the large sound shook the
speaker screws loose. When Abt guys were hooking everything up at our new
place, I asked them to see what the rattling was all about. They came back
holding a handful of almonds. The mouse stashed almost half a bowl inside the
subwoofer and we didn’t find it until four years later!
And then natural disaster of a watery variety came. When the
water receded, and we finished cleaning and were about to rebuild, the mice
came. Field mice, a lot larger than a grey house mouse. They came silently,
suddenly, and in droves. They infiltrated the basement and used the plumbing as
highways. And they partied in our kitchen while we slept. Party was short lived
however when I realized that those little bits of black rolled up sock fuzz
were not fuzz at all but poop. We already had Danny, so Mama Bear instinct
kicked in and I mobilized a response within an hour. Orkin was called, all I
had to say was: “mice” and “baby in the house”. By the time they showed up, the
black “fuzz” was collected into a Ziploc bag – evidence. I also lysoled, and
bleached, and scrubbed, and vacuumed everything. The Orkin guy was deployed
down the basement with orders to kill everything. He closed the door behind
him. First there was silence, then a lot of crashing, then silence again before
he emerged and told me that he needed a larger box. A minute later he appeared
triumphant – he caught the mouse. It was a field mouse, only sized like a small rat. He baited
and trapped and poisoned every corner and left me with instructions to call if
the traps caught anything. I called the next day: a sticky trap under the sink
caught a mouse. Only by the time they came to pick it up, it ripped out of the
trap and ran away naked.
Two days later, I opened the sink cabinet to get Windex.
There, in the corner, was a mouse tangled in all the pipes from the dishwasher.
By this point they were already eating the poison and moving a bit slow – it
didn’t scatter when I opened the cabinet. I had to think fast, there was no way
I was letting it escape, but I didn’t want to touch it since it was still
moving. The only thing that came to mind was the insulation spray foam that
comes in a can. I unloaded the entire can of expanding foam into the cabinet
and then taped the doors shut with blue painter’s tape for good measure. When
Orkin showed up to dispose, I calmly pointed to the cabinet and asked if he had
a chisel. That night I set out my own traps.
Terry was putting Danny to bed, while I was setting traps
bated with peanut butter. I strategically positioned the traps, taped the cabinet
shut, turned the lights off, then sat on the couch with TV sound on low and
waited. Terry came down and joined me on the couch. We sat in silence… Smack!
Bam, bam, bam, bam! Ten minutes after I set the traps I got one! I leaped from
the couch into the kitchen. Terry stayed back, he knew when to stay out of my
way. I crept to the sink cabinet listening for any more activity. Quiet. I
swung the door open, ripping all the tape, and there it was… a dead mouse. I
made a little excited dance, before giving Terry a grabber (which was gifted to
us a 30th birthday joke on the account that we were getting old) and
a pair of yellow rubber gloves and tasking him with the removal.
I think our haul that season was seven. Now I leave the hunt
to Slurpie the Owl and a neighborhood cat. They have been doing a good job so
far. But, in case they miss one, there is always a trap, or a broom and a
screwdriver.