More mice

We're under about five inches of snow and my landlord is, as of yesterday, paying for my heat, so I've been home all day trying futilely to write a paper due Tuesday. About two hours ago, there was much screaming and commotion from my neighbor's side of the wall; about an hour ago, she heard a scream from mine; and a few minutes ago, she knocked on my door and we compared stories.

Mine was pretty tame; the only reason I screamed was that this morning's routine mousetrap check had been negative (did I mention that I chalked up number ELEVEN on Friday, after a Thursday evening mousetrap run prompted by seeing one one my counter, TWICE?*), but when I did another habitual check later after throwing something in the trash, I was completely startled to see a tail. Thankfully it was attached to an intact mouse who'd been cleanly killed by the trap now obscuring it from view--but it was still a bit of a shock.

My neighbor's story was much better. She'd been about to head out for coffee, pulling her boots on on the landing, when her foot encountered something soft in the toe of one. Thinking she'd left a balled-up sock in it, she inverted the boot and shook it out--only to have the "sock" tear off across the floor of her apartment. She ran shrieking up and down the length of her apartment--the sound I'd heard from next door--while the friend she had over attempted to catch it. I was doubly horrified by her story, recalling that to take the trash out after discovering my own mouse, I'd slipped my bare feet into the snowboarding boots that had been in my closet since last winter, without even shaking them out. Eeps.

She asked if I had any mousetraps, but I had used my last that morning. She's going to pick some up for me when she goes. Sigh.

*The boy at Ace who rang up my purchase asked me if I'd used that particular kind of mousetrap before. Amused, I answered, "Yes; I've killed eight mice with them," and then, curious, asked, "Why?" He mentioned that some customers had reported trouble with the sensitivity of the yellow cheese pad of that "easy-set" variety. I said I'd had the mice steal bait a few times, but that overall they'd been quite satisfactorily successful. As he handed me my receipt, he said, "Have a good evening... killing mice."