Chapter 20 - In which the saga of the mouse is told

Before I tell of the saga of the mouse, may I just say that my Japanese Skit was awesome? It went really well and was a lot of fun! A lot of people laughed... We filmed it, so I might put it up here sometime soon... Okay, on to the saga of the mouse.

So... Michael and I had a mouse in our apartment. Not mice. Just the one mouse. How do we know it was just the one? Well, we cleaned up our living room and found a) no holes or any way the mouse could have entered, and b) no mouse droppings, nest, resting area of any kind. The mouse took to hiding in the heater when we chased it, but there was no sign of it being an inhabitant of the heater for more than an hour or so...
So the mouse was new to the apartment. It had just appeared, about a week ago, out of the blue. I suspect that it scuttled in through the front door, unnoticed, because whoever opened the door was looking elsewhere, and hid immediately. Our good friend Margaret thinks that may be the case too.

Anyways, the mouse was trapped. Proof that it could not hide very well in our apartment is that it had to travel out in the open. Never traveling inside walls or anything. It had to walk right through the center of the living room to get anywhere. I felt really sorry for the little thing. It was extremely frightened and trapped... We actually tried to catch it several ways (one of them was to take a glass and catch the mouse inside it so that we may take it outside) and, on one occasion, managed to get really close to it. It was extremely uber-cute! Without the tail, it was, what, an inch long? It had cute little round ears and beady little eyes and looked incredibly well groomed (for a moment, I thought it might be an escaped pet-mouse).

Anyways, after trying to scare it off and giving the mouse 36 hours to find its way back out of our apartment, we settled for buying traps. I did not want to. The mouse was so cute and I hate killing things! (Except for spiders, but that's because spiders have no soul!) But Michael said we did not have a choice. So we set out to buy traps. There was just one problem: no one sold any bloody traps! Not even the Shopper's Drug Mart and I swear I had seen mouse traps on display there just two weeks prior! We also went to Depaneurs and Super Markets... no where downtown had the stupid things!

So I hunted for the nearest renovation/home hardware store on google. The closest thing was a Canadian Tire at the Alexis Nihon center. So there I went the next day, after my photoshoot, to buy traps. There was quite a variety: "quick kill," "plug into the wall traps," "sure kill," "rodent repellents" etc. The more I looked, the queasier I felt and the more sorry I felt for the poor little mouse too. Michael and I had taken a tendency to talk to the empty space in our apartment and announce loudly: "Mister Mousey! Please go away! We don't want to kill you!" ... Anyways, there were the good old traditional (but incredibly gruesome) wooden traps by Victor. My mum used those in the basement at home when we had mice, so I knew those worked, and they were dirt cheap. Then there was also a selection of "living traps" which would catch the mouse alive and allow it to be released. I bought three of those and two killer ones.

I got home and we set up the "living traps" only. I told Michael I really did not feel like killing the poor Mister Mousey... I find those traps waaaay too gruesome! So we said we'd start with the live traps and see what happens. For a full 24 hours following the setting of the traps, there was peace. No Mr. Mousey crossing the living room at all. We almost thought he'd left...
But the next day, he came back in full force, scuttling back and forth from behind the oven to his safe-place in the electrical heater. Several times, the mouse passed right beside the live traps, giving us an "I know what you're up to and I'm not falling for it" look. I was starting to really wish it would just get into a trap and it would be over with.

Then, last night, Michael got tired of it and decided to set our killing traps. Upon my request, he also moved the living traps to more strategic locations, as I hoped we could catch it alive and not kill it. Well, barely 5 minutes after Michael had set the traps, I heard the appalling 'CRACK' of one of the death traps. As I had been walking through the apartment, I hoped, for just a second, that I had set it off accidentally by making the floorboards move. Michael checked. The mouse was dead. I did not look - I could not bring myself to do it. I went to take a long, long bath instead.

Stupid little Mr. Mousey! We gave you a chance! Why did you have to avoid the living traps successfully for 3 days, but you got caught by a lethal one in less than 5 minutes? WHY?!! *Sigh* I really feel bad for the little creature. We've left some more traps up, just in case there are more mice, but all seems calm now...

Requiescat in Pacem, Mr. Mousey!

P.S. Mice can jump FAR!! (it jumped off the stove and back into the living room, that's about 3 feet of distance!)

P.S. II - Michael has caught a bad cold. Again. Poor thing: it seems he catches a cold once a month... once every two months, if he's lucky! He seems prone to catching them. So now I've got to put up with a man-cold again! *sigh*... (lol) Ah, the disadvantages of living with a man! XD