The Night of Rodent Slaughter
Created | Updated May 24, 2004
Ah, wintertime...isn't it wonderful? The snow, the thrilling chill in the air, the festive feel of the holidays, mice. See, now that doesn't fit. Did you ever notice that? Mice are certainly a part of winter, a fact of life. But when you talk about the wonders of winter, mice just don't seem that wonderful unless you're a twelve-year-old girl who was fascinated with Redwall and thinks they're cute. The rest of the world, however, recognizes mice for the pests they are. In wintertime, we frolic in the snow and rejoice over the holidays like everyone else, but when someone even so much as mentions a mouse (even Mickey), for weeks our minds are plagued with thoughts of killing them in various—yet equally painful—ways. Thus, our holiday is ruined. The reason we spend so much time thinking about the violent deaths of mice is that they're such pains in the buttocks, for lack of a better word that isn't “dirty”.
So what's the big problem? After all, mice are small, right? Wrong! This is a common misconception! Starving mice are small. Mice that have been feeding on my food are not small at all. They're fat, strong and muscular, yet can still somehow manage to fit into a hole the size of my pinky finger!
Eating my food isn't the only problem though. If it were that simple, I'd consider leaving them a plate of cookies clearly marked 'mice'. Kind of like a Santa thing...In fact, I've done it before! Okay, so they weren't exactly "cookies" so much as "poison pellets", but you get my point. The problem is, when mice eat, they leave messes. And I'm not just talking shredded cardboard bits. I'm talking droppings…large amounts of droppings. Because, folks, like what goes up must come down, what goes in must come out. All that food of mine they're eating's got to go somewhere, and apparently that somewhere is not the toilet. Mice can read (how else do they manage to eat everything brand-name foods but avoid poison), but they can't recognize the difference between countertop and toilet. Or maybe they can...but they just don't care.
On top of the food and waste issues, mice are noisy: very noisy! I could have sworn one night that they were holding the Mouse Olympics in my bedroom. They had found a plastic bag somewhere and were rustling around in it, but there was a tremendously disturbing pattern of sounds, all of them at a deafening volume:
*Thud thud thud thud.....silence.....rustle rustle....thud thud thud ...... rustle rustle!!!*
It sounded rather like they were running, jumping, and landing on the plastic bag...mouse gymnastics or something. Their floor routine was so noisy, I couldn't sleep. I tried to cover my ears, but my sleepy mind had decided that the only possible way I could accomplish this was to use my thumbs, making for an awkward, uncomfortable position. That, on top of my fearsome visions of what these impressively athletic mice could do to me, made for a rather sleepless night.
So why don't I just kill them? Well, that’s easier said than done. Mice are extremely intelligent and difficult to kill. As I stated before, they read the labels on the rat poison and avoid them. In their advanced state of intelligence, they have developed some kind of mouse-trap squad (similar to our bomb squad) who carefully pick off the cheese without triggering the trap.
Peanut butter doesn't even work, since they've figured out how to lick it off. Every time I come up with something new, they manage to adapt. They're like the Borg. Resistance is futile.
Until now.
My family and I discovered wonderful little things called "glue traps". They're large enough so mice can't simply bend over and eat...it's out of their reach, so they have to step on them. Unless the mice have gone Mission Impossible on me and gotten Rat Cruise to be lowered down from the box of Cheerios©, this is foolproof. The traps worked for awhile, when the mice were too stupid to realize there's no such thing as a free lunch. If it's out in the open, it's got to be a trap. We humans know that...it's what makes us the superior species. But when dealing with mice, you don't always feel that way. After several weeks (of weight training, probably), the mice somehow managed to hop on the traps, get the food, and then pull themselves free, leaving behind small clumps of steely gray fur. It was like they were mocking me. "Na-na nee boo-boo, you can't catch me".
After that, we were on the lookout for a gray, Vin Diesel-like mouse. Every now and then we'd catch glimpses of him, large and muscular, the dim light casting eerie shadows upon him to add to his daunting physique. Nothing was safe from the mice anymore now that they had this strongmouse recruit with them. Even Crisco© cans were broken into. Crisco! I mean, honestly!! It’s pretty bad when our vats of grease aren’t even our own. We were running out of hiding places to shelter our rations, and our impenetrable refrigerator just wasn't big enough. We had begun to give up hope on ever catching the rascally rodents, and considered raising the white flag—letting the mice take over and drive us out of our home—until that beautiful, glorious night.
It was a cool night, being winter and all, but it had a strange hopeful darkness to it. We were about to go to bed, but I was reading a rather intriguing book and just couldn't set it down. I stayed up a bit longer than everybody else because of it. I was just sitting there, reading quietly, when I heard a scuffle in the cabinet. It sounded like any other scuffle, but since it was in the cabinet, I decided to take action and stop Booker T. Mousington. After all, I need my food, and I figured that being a martial artist would give me a small advantage: I could probably take him and come away with only a few scrapes. I might even still have an arm! So, I opened up the door and shouted "Boogawooga!", only to find that the mouse had already been caught in a glue trap. After inspecting the mouse, I realized it was him! The muscular mouse of mischief! Excited, I ran into my parents' bedroom and woke up Dad (he hadn't been stirred by the "Boogawooga"...Dad's a very heavy sleeper... about 12 tons).
"We got him, Dad, we got him!"
"Got who?????" Dad said, probably not even awake
"The mouse!!! That gray mouse that keeps escaping the glue traps!"
"No way!" He was now fully awake.
"Yes way! Come look!"
We scurried out into the kitchen, looking into the cabinet like gleeful children on Christmas morning.
"Oh no! He's getting out!!" Dad cried. "Get him!"
"What?" I said, with disbelief. Dad was telling me—5' 1/2", 95 lbs me—to go out and execute this mouse! It'd eat me alive! I felt a little wary about the command. Sure, I hated its guts, but....but what? Heck, it ate my food, I was killing the thing! I took the mouse outside and smacked it over the head with a hammer. I came back inside and resumed the reading of my book, happy with my success. Not even 15 minutes later, I heard more rustling. I thought I was just hearing things, but then it happened again. I didn't think these Einstein mice would be so dumb to come out again, but apparently, without their leader they were powerless.
I called out to Sean, my brother. "We got another one!"
Sean handled the situation while I informed Dad. He groggily climbed out of bed once more and came out to the kitchen. As soon as he caught glimpse of the prisoner, he went ballistic.
"I don't believe it! Another one! How long ago did we get the last one?" He asked.
"Less than twenty minutes ago!" I said, sharing his enthusiasm.
"He's even bigger than the last one!" Dad observed, and quite accurately. This mouse was fatter than the last, but not quite so muscular. He was bright orange and looked like a guinea pig. He must be the king or something, we figured. With expert speed, Sean got a plastic bag, shoved the mouse inside, and took it out on the back porch.
"It's getting off the trap! He's running around in the bag! Aaaaahhh!!!!!" Sean frantically smacked the bag with the hammer, like one of those cheesy carnival games. Finally, he executed a successful blow, and the family had prevailed. We reluctantly retired to our beds before we could cause any more carnage.
That was the last we saw of any mice that season. Now, we approach a new year, perhaps better prepared, perhaps not. After all, mice are like the Borg, which means there's more, and they've probably adapted. But even so, good always wins over evil.
I just hope those mice didn't adapt to that too.
THE END
So what's the big problem? After all, mice are small, right? Wrong! This is a common misconception! Starving mice are small. Mice that have been feeding on my food are not small at all. They're fat, strong and muscular, yet can still somehow manage to fit into a hole the size of my pinky finger!
Eating my food isn't the only problem though. If it were that simple, I'd consider leaving them a plate of cookies clearly marked 'mice'. Kind of like a Santa thing...In fact, I've done it before! Okay, so they weren't exactly "cookies" so much as "poison pellets", but you get my point. The problem is, when mice eat, they leave messes. And I'm not just talking shredded cardboard bits. I'm talking droppings…large amounts of droppings. Because, folks, like what goes up must come down, what goes in must come out. All that food of mine they're eating's got to go somewhere, and apparently that somewhere is not the toilet. Mice can read (how else do they manage to eat everything brand-name foods but avoid poison), but they can't recognize the difference between countertop and toilet. Or maybe they can...but they just don't care.
On top of the food and waste issues, mice are noisy: very noisy! I could have sworn one night that they were holding the Mouse Olympics in my bedroom. They had found a plastic bag somewhere and were rustling around in it, but there was a tremendously disturbing pattern of sounds, all of them at a deafening volume:
*Thud thud thud thud.....silence.....rustle rustle....thud thud thud ...... rustle rustle!!!*
It sounded rather like they were running, jumping, and landing on the plastic bag...mouse gymnastics or something. Their floor routine was so noisy, I couldn't sleep. I tried to cover my ears, but my sleepy mind had decided that the only possible way I could accomplish this was to use my thumbs, making for an awkward, uncomfortable position. That, on top of my fearsome visions of what these impressively athletic mice could do to me, made for a rather sleepless night.
So why don't I just kill them? Well, that’s easier said than done. Mice are extremely intelligent and difficult to kill. As I stated before, they read the labels on the rat poison and avoid them. In their advanced state of intelligence, they have developed some kind of mouse-trap squad (similar to our bomb squad) who carefully pick off the cheese without triggering the trap.
Peanut butter doesn't even work, since they've figured out how to lick it off. Every time I come up with something new, they manage to adapt. They're like the Borg. Resistance is futile.
Until now.
My family and I discovered wonderful little things called "glue traps". They're large enough so mice can't simply bend over and eat...it's out of their reach, so they have to step on them. Unless the mice have gone Mission Impossible on me and gotten Rat Cruise to be lowered down from the box of Cheerios©, this is foolproof. The traps worked for awhile, when the mice were too stupid to realize there's no such thing as a free lunch. If it's out in the open, it's got to be a trap. We humans know that...it's what makes us the superior species. But when dealing with mice, you don't always feel that way. After several weeks (of weight training, probably), the mice somehow managed to hop on the traps, get the food, and then pull themselves free, leaving behind small clumps of steely gray fur. It was like they were mocking me. "Na-na nee boo-boo, you can't catch me".
After that, we were on the lookout for a gray, Vin Diesel-like mouse. Every now and then we'd catch glimpses of him, large and muscular, the dim light casting eerie shadows upon him to add to his daunting physique. Nothing was safe from the mice anymore now that they had this strongmouse recruit with them. Even Crisco© cans were broken into. Crisco! I mean, honestly!! It’s pretty bad when our vats of grease aren’t even our own. We were running out of hiding places to shelter our rations, and our impenetrable refrigerator just wasn't big enough. We had begun to give up hope on ever catching the rascally rodents, and considered raising the white flag—letting the mice take over and drive us out of our home—until that beautiful, glorious night.
It was a cool night, being winter and all, but it had a strange hopeful darkness to it. We were about to go to bed, but I was reading a rather intriguing book and just couldn't set it down. I stayed up a bit longer than everybody else because of it. I was just sitting there, reading quietly, when I heard a scuffle in the cabinet. It sounded like any other scuffle, but since it was in the cabinet, I decided to take action and stop Booker T. Mousington. After all, I need my food, and I figured that being a martial artist would give me a small advantage: I could probably take him and come away with only a few scrapes. I might even still have an arm! So, I opened up the door and shouted "Boogawooga!", only to find that the mouse had already been caught in a glue trap. After inspecting the mouse, I realized it was him! The muscular mouse of mischief! Excited, I ran into my parents' bedroom and woke up Dad (he hadn't been stirred by the "Boogawooga"...Dad's a very heavy sleeper... about 12 tons).
"We got him, Dad, we got him!"
"Got who?????" Dad said, probably not even awake
"The mouse!!! That gray mouse that keeps escaping the glue traps!"
"No way!" He was now fully awake.
"Yes way! Come look!"
We scurried out into the kitchen, looking into the cabinet like gleeful children on Christmas morning.
"Oh no! He's getting out!!" Dad cried. "Get him!"
"What?" I said, with disbelief. Dad was telling me—5' 1/2", 95 lbs me—to go out and execute this mouse! It'd eat me alive! I felt a little wary about the command. Sure, I hated its guts, but....but what? Heck, it ate my food, I was killing the thing! I took the mouse outside and smacked it over the head with a hammer. I came back inside and resumed the reading of my book, happy with my success. Not even 15 minutes later, I heard more rustling. I thought I was just hearing things, but then it happened again. I didn't think these Einstein mice would be so dumb to come out again, but apparently, without their leader they were powerless.
I called out to Sean, my brother. "We got another one!"
Sean handled the situation while I informed Dad. He groggily climbed out of bed once more and came out to the kitchen. As soon as he caught glimpse of the prisoner, he went ballistic.
"I don't believe it! Another one! How long ago did we get the last one?" He asked.
"Less than twenty minutes ago!" I said, sharing his enthusiasm.
"He's even bigger than the last one!" Dad observed, and quite accurately. This mouse was fatter than the last, but not quite so muscular. He was bright orange and looked like a guinea pig. He must be the king or something, we figured. With expert speed, Sean got a plastic bag, shoved the mouse inside, and took it out on the back porch.
"It's getting off the trap! He's running around in the bag! Aaaaahhh!!!!!" Sean frantically smacked the bag with the hammer, like one of those cheesy carnival games. Finally, he executed a successful blow, and the family had prevailed. We reluctantly retired to our beds before we could cause any more carnage.
That was the last we saw of any mice that season. Now, we approach a new year, perhaps better prepared, perhaps not. After all, mice are like the Borg, which means there's more, and they've probably adapted. But even so, good always wins over evil.
I just hope those mice didn't adapt to that too.
THE END
