Lawrence.com

Before moving to Lawrence, I could count on one hand the number of encounters I’d had with mice — and two of them involved other people’s pet snakes. I recall one incident when a furry rodent took up refuge in the onion bin in my mother’s Alabama kitchen, but I never actually laid eyes on the bugger.

Down south, our pest problems are generally of the roachy bug variety. One could venture to even call them “Alabama mice.” Now, I’m no fool, and I know that there are mice in Alabama, but I’d never had much experience with them. When autumn’s cooling breezes first arrived in Lawrence this year, my friend James came running out of his kitchen. He was screaming about there being a mouse.

I was so perplexed by his reaction. We proceeded to have a heated debate about which pest was worse: roaches or mice. I argued that mice, by default, were less troublesome and “disgusting” because they are mammals. I mean, how bad could they be? At least they don’t have crunchy outer shells, right? I’d been dealing with roaches throughout my entire life … and these suckers are HUGE. (Sidebar: To prove my point, as soon as I rolled up to a gas station in Alabama last month, despite temperatures in the 40s, there were roaches everywhere.)

Around the same time, I moved into a new house. One afternoon, I was lazing on the couch and heard something rustling underneath it. Moments later, I saw a grey streak dart across the living room floor. A few days after first contact, one of my roommates told me that the mice had become more brazen and were climbing our shelves. I was still unconvinced that these silly little furballs would cause me any discomfort.

A week later, I was blissfully drifting into slumber when I thought I felt something run across my face. My southern intuition told me to panic, as this could, in fact, be a roach. (It wouldn’t be the first time a roach has run across me in the night.) I comforted myself with the notion that it was nothing, and I began to doze off again. Then came the rustling sound. Damnation! Now, I couldn’t ignore this sound, so I turned on the light to assess the situation. Nothing. I rolled over, annoyed. Within another few minutes I could hear the distinct sound of something gnawing at my bedroom door.

I jumped up and whipped on the lights. There it was. Logic dictated that I open the door to let Mighty Mouse out, but it scurried deeper into my room. Luckily my roommate and her boyfriend were drunkenly hanging around, and he offered to chase the mouse out of my room. I laid back down … then it hit me. The mice were coming from a hole RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD.

Oh hell naw.

The next day, I packed that hole so full of steel wool and insulation that it would take a jackhammer to get through. This was war. I haven’t seen one at home since. Too bad they decided to take over both my office and bfries’ (Alabama slang for “best friends”) house.

After some touch-and-go moments with unbeknownst sticky traps, it seemed as if the mice had vacated my home away from home. We would hear them running or gnawing occasionally, but it seemed that the mice had been relegated to the basement and therefore out of plain sight.

Unfortunately, Mickey and Minnie did what Mickey and Minnie are prone to do, and they multiplied. At first it seemed like it was just one who was allegedly surviving on a nutrient-rich velvet poster. This non-cheddar-lovin’ friend seemed braver than the previous posse, and little mouse carcasses started showing up more frequently down in the basement.

I knew things had gone from bad to worse when I heard them in the kitchen. It sounded like they were playing hockey or perhaps they were brushing up on figure skating in anticipation of the Winter Olympics. Regardless, those mice were all over that cast iron skillet like it was an arena constructed solely for them. These lil’ guys weren’t vacating any time soon.

Traps of every variety were purchased, and within 10 minutes of placing one of those neck-snappin’ do-hickeys on the kitchen counter, we had our first victim. Reload. Another. And another. In the span of a few hours, this trap had caught at least six mice. Every once in awhile, I would take it upon myself to empty the trap, and I couldn’t help but just stare in uncomfortable wonderment at the tiny bodies.

Meanwhile at my office, the pests just started appearing. Occasionally I do get left alone in the office, and last Friday was one such incident. I ran over to my coworker’s desk to grab a key, and I thought I saw something move in her drawer. “What in the world could she have in here that is alive,” I wondered aloud, as I looked closer.

Yep, it was another one, then two, then three. From the angle I was observing, it looked like one mouse was trapped in a Ziploc bag. I hopped up and down on one foot, trying to formulate a plan for ensnaring and subsequently releasing it. Then the living MicroMachines took off for darker environs. That afternoon, I found myself creeping up on the drawer just to catch a glimpse of these creatures. I am both fascinated and abhorred by this new-to-me pest.

Ninja stealth moves notwithstanding, my efforts to study them were in vain, as they seemed to have joined a cult … I mean, it’s like the Mousetown Massacre with Benadryl Kool-Aid. So somewhere around here, they are all dried up and died. At least they went to the big cheese wheel in the sky peacefully and free of allergies, right?