NaBloPo(One)Mo!

One.

That's how many clicks on "older entries" it currently takes to get from the front page of this blog to my last NaBloPoMo entry (2011). A full nine posts--briefly touching upon adventures including Mouse Wars (redux); foot surgery (hallux); and the acquisition of a tautology of felines (deluxe). Clearly, I've been a less-than-consistent poster.

But what's better for consistency than a challenge? That's right: it's NaBloPoMo again, and another chance to fail (or, you know, succeed!) at posting every day for a month. I'm grateful to Mari for reminding me, and hope that lots of you join in, too. (Or at very least comment; it's seriously the comments that keep me going.)

So, one mo' NaBloPoMo? Here goes.

Kittens

As you may know, in November David and I acquired a cat problem to deal with our mouse problem. We no longer have any mice, and the cats are among the sweetest, best-looking, affectionate, and chillest that I've ever encountered.
Which is a good thing, because left to their own devices, they would destroy everything in sight.

That's not quite true. Their favorite objects of destruction are toilet paper, plants, textiles, sewing/crocheting supplies, and cardboard boxes. If we're careful about limiting their access to those objects, they may still scratch a bit on the furniture (Icy) or steal David's razor (Pobbes), but wreak far less havoc.

Before we realized we had to keep them away from most clothing, however, we did have a few casualties. They chewed a hole in the back of a silky new camisole with the tags still on it, and multiple holes in another top I'd only worn once. Worst, though, they got a hold of the cashmere sweater my sister and I got David for Christmas last year. Pobbes first got to it when it was on the top of David's (tall) dresser, chewing a hole that rendered it unwearable but still left plenty of material for recycling. I put it in my closet to protect it, but yesterday discovered that Pobbes had pulled it out from under the closet doors and was again mauling it. In fact, he had Swiss cheesed the whole thing, leaving hardly any material suitable for crafting. Upon this discovery, we decided to let him keep his furry quarry, in the hopes of dissuading his destruction of other prized clothing.

David captured the following video when Pobbes had dragged his trophy to one of his other favorite things, the big sleeping bag you can see on the red chair. Also visible in the video is Fernie the Palm, who is tattered but hanging on after suffering greatly as one of the kittens' earliest targets. Try to ignore my maniacal cackling, and enjoy our kittens doing what they appear to do best:

Awakening

There are plenty of bad ways to awaken. On a Tuesday, thinking it's Saturday. To the sound of water dripping from your ceiling. I submit, however, that one of the worst is to the sound of mice chewing through the carpet in your bedroom.

Oh, yes.

David had sealed all the radiator pipes going through the hardwood floors, but we hadn't worried about the bedroom, as the carpet tightly enclosed the pipes and seemed quite tough. Not too tough for mice, though, apparently!

The sound of fibers snapping, presumably between sharp rodent teeth, awakened me (not generally an easy task) at about 4am. I rolled over, saw David moving, and mumbled, "Do you hear that? I think it's mice." It was, at least to my sleep-besotted brain, a terrible, nerve-grating noise, which sounded like the mice were destroying the very foundations of our home. When David would stomp on the floor, the snapping would stop momentarily, though it quickly resumed with the same fervor. Confident the problem was in capable hands, however, I rolled back over and fell asleep. (David, who sleeps more lightly than I, couldn't, and was unfortunately awake for the next few hours. He reports that a mouse did make it into the bedroom--and into my closet.)

David discovered that there were gaps between the floor and the wall that had been covered by the carpet, so tonight he filled those, too. I did see one mouse today, down in the basement--close to poison the neighbor had set out.

With my luck, it will probably die amidst my storage boxes.

On a happier note, tonight I made an awesome dinner: soba noodles with cilantro-spinach pesto, salt and pepper tofu (with red bell pepper), and steamed broccoli. And then, because I'm trying to look less ribsy, most of a carton of Ben & Jerry's (the perfect chaser to an otherwise vegan meal). We couldn't find the camera, so you'll have to just trust me on this one, but it was bright, festive, and completely delicious.

Mice

Yes, mice.

Sigh.

So... quite awhile ago our neighbors spilled a bag of birdseed in the basement, and didn't get it cleaned up until recently. I had told them the extremely abbreviated version of the Mouse Wars horror stories, but I must not have been convincing enough, because the birdseed, and the mice whose tails I would see darting away from it when I went down there to do laundry, stuck around. I figured the first floor was a barrier between us and the vermin, and that the neighbors would get serious when they were invaded.

Apparently that happened sometime last week, and I feel both sad for them and a bit distraught that they were providing the mouse buffet for so long.

Anyway, yesterday, the invaders made it to our floor, apparently via the radiator pipes. David saw one, and went to the hardware store for steel wool and expanding foam. Although our current place is far better sealed than the last one, it is still a century old, and it looks like the mice were using those radiator pipes as their private heated highways, entering through the gap in the hardwood floor. (Also! I just remembered what David told me yesterday: that when our neighbor saw where the mice were entering the basement, he mixed up cement to seal up the hole. The mice tunneled through the wet cement. They are a surprisingly formidable enemy, for one so small, incompetent, and incontinent.)

So. David plugged up the holes. (The Small Dog was also very interested in the expanding foam; his sniffing around resulted in a little moustache that appears to be semi-permanent.)

But then, last night, I saw a fat little mouse running along the living room wall by the radiator. I shrieked, and may have continued shrieking each time the mouse moved, as David (drawn by the noise) and I stalked it as it ran to the other radiator before disappearing behind the fridge.

I ended up staying up really late as I prepared for today's first day of classes, and as I sat alone in the otherwise silent house, I could hear mouse-y scratchings behind me in the darkness. It finally appeared again, returning to the radiator and those newly-sealed pipes before running under a chair. I opened the front door, hoping to shoo it out, but it disappeared. I tried again when the mouse reemerged (all the while, maintaining what I considered an admirable silence!), but it disappeared into the office. Unable to find it, I--resignedly but determinedly--walked down to the basement and retrieved my store of mouse traps.

I set one with peanut butter, left it just outside the office, and headed to bed, leaving David a warning note. He reported this morning that the trap had its intended effect; the fact that I didn't have to witness it or bear away the results is just one more reason I love that man.

There have been no sightings today, and we're crossing our fingers that the one we saw was just a lone individual who had the misfortune of being on the wrong side (our side) of the new seals. Yeah. Fingers crossed.

On a happier note, it has been ridiculously warm here recently; today was sunny and nearly 50°! I ran errands on my bicycle this afternoon, and it was euphoric.

Also, this is Disaster Kitchen post #777--auspicious!

Pests

Brian posted today about a close encounter with a mouse, one closer--and funnier!--than many of my tales of the historic Mouse Wars. As I was looking through a few of those stories earlier today, I found some that I could definitely laugh at, and others that still seriously creeped me out. Of all the things I don't miss about the old place, the vermin are high on the list.

However, last night we came home to another horrifying pest: a house centipede. Seriously, these things are awful. According to Wikipedia, they can have up to fifteen pairs of legs. (Wikipedia also includes this charming quote of 1902, credited to entomologist C.L. Marlatt):

It may often be seen darting across floors with very great speed, occasionally stopping suddenly and remaining absolutely motionless, presently to resume its rapid movements, often darting directly at inmates of the house, particularly women, evidently with a desire to conceal itself beneath their dresses, and thus creating much consternation.

I'm pretty sure they're the grossest bug I've ever seen, and that's counting Louisiana cockroaches and Borneo cicadas. We were indeed consternated to find one waiting for us on our dining room wall when we returned from an evening out with friends.

I'm sparing you the close-up of the house centipede;
you can just see it as a dark blur here.

This is the second one we've encountered in this apartment; the last one so disturbed us that we used the vacuum to avoid having to touch it. Because we have one of those lightweight models, without a hose, David lifted the whole thing up above his head to aspirate the foul creature--which, thankfully, worked.

Last night, though, David just smashed it with a paper towel, and I Windexed the wall afterward. Ewwww.

Thinking about that as I read Brian's post and some of my old ones, I wondered whether I'd rather have house centipedes or mice. No question, really: as gross as they are, I'll take the arthropods any day--though I really, really, really hope I don't have to.

Watery

The ceiling started leaking again on Tuesday, and then again today. Tuesday my landlord had sent me an e-mail to warn me that they were clearing snow in preparation for the mythical re-tarring to occur sometime later in the week and that the dripping might start again--though for the last time. Today, my only warning was an ominous dripping sound (and these days anything that slightly resembles that noise sends me into spasms, much like anything evoking a scritch or scrabble did during the height of the Mouse Wars) and some damp clothing in the closet. The Tuesday before that, the dripping had actually awakened us, at 5:40 a.m. We heard the drops splashing on the closet floor, but it turns out the pantry was flooding far worse. There's nothing quite like spending one's first hour of wakefulness removing all the contents of one's pantry onto the already meager surfaces remaining in the kitchen.

That day I started searching for apartments in earnest.

The good news is, we found one! We're planning to move weekend after next.

This weekend, we're going to be On A Boat! My dear friend M is getting married, and I'm thrilled to be heading out there to celebrate with her. Especially thrilling? 50 degree temperature gain. Oh, yes. I can't even communicate how ready I am to trade in views of endless snowbanks for ones of water and sand. Minneapolis has been more or less monochrome for the past two months, at least, so I am SO ready for some color (though not, of course, on my own skin!).

I can't wait!

Things That Are Awesome V

Things That Are Awesome (Spring Edition):

• Warm weather! Monday it was 67° and I ran in shorts. It was especially awesome because it was a full 70 degrees warmer than it had been the previous Wednesday (on which I refused to bike to school, because subzero biking is one thing in January or February, and another thing altogether in March).
• Warm weather biking. It is so much easier to bike when you're not fighting snow, ice, a bitter wind, and/or your appendages freezing off. In the past week I've been early to two events because I had underestimated how long it would take me to bike there. It just feels so easy.
  
• New earrings. Does anybody recognize these? I'm just curious. Although they're huge, they're so light and delicate that I can hardly feel them.
  
• Spring break. I only have to be on campus for class one day a week, so having the week off school wasn't a huge change (though the break in University e-mails and related random events was awfully nice). The best part has been socializing with people from the department: two happy hours, one Soup Night, and a brunch, so far. One of the happy hours was even outside! Having a spring break that actually feels like spring rules.
• Being spoiled. Because I was so stressed about the applications, papers, and grading I have to get done, David surprised me by booking and treating me to an aromatherapy massage at this fabulous converted mansion in my neighborhood. It was 90 minutes of wonderful, and left me feeling amazing. Oh, and as if that weren't enough, just after I got back home, UPS delivered this from him, which made me laugh out loud (note the card):

Yep. So far, spring has me feeling so good that I kind of don't even care about the mice anymore ('caught the third one a couple days ago). Even billing my landlord seems like too much trouble, when the sun is shining (and your comments to that post were awesome, by the way!). Life is good.

Dear Landlord,

Hi! How are you? Personally, I'm a little peeved. First, because it's the middle of March and I'm completely over these subzero temps (though they are predicting 50s by Monday, which is a huge relief). Second, because the mice are back.

Yesterday, I noticed a sudden preponderance of their... evidence... under my sink, and so carefully cleaned and disinfected everything. Yesterday evening, I heard rustling, and so sneaked up to my sink, opened the cupboard door--and saw the mouse in the corner. Startled, I flung the door closed--and then, examining the afterimage seared onto my brain, realized to my horror that there had been another mouse, in the trashcan, its furry silhouette visible against the white of the liner.

I did what I usually do in these circumstances (you will recall, dear Landlord, a long and unfortunate history with these things) and went next door. M had both mousetraps and sympathy, which I accepted gratefully.

I baited and positioned the traps, and as of last night hadn't caught anything. This morning, however, the check revealed both traps full. I had things to do (as one does), so I put off the unpleasant task of emptying them.

However, when I reached the point in my fellowship application writing that disposing of mouse corpses seemed preferable to staring at my laptop screen any longer, I put on my boots, steeled my nerves, and opened the cupboard door again--only to be greeted by a tiny mouseling, perched on the edge of the trashcan. My shout of shock and outrage either didn't faze him at all or stunned him into immobility; he just pointed his oversized ears at me and stared, miniature nose twitching. I cursed the fact that I had ever read The Tale of Despereaux, and that now I was even considering this small pest an "orphan" (at my hands, nonetheless!).

To make a long story shorter, after more silent standing-off and indecision over what to do, the mouseling climbed off the trashcan and disappeared into the black hole that connects all four units. I disposed of the occupied traps (jaw clenched and barely fending off the full-body shudders--you'll recall, dear Landlord, that I am a sensitive, conscientious, quasi-vegan, pacifist), again cleaned and disinfected the area, washed my hands several times, and am now writing you.

Because I've reached a solution. I'm putting a bounty on these mice.

I've decided that $50 per head is reasonable. If I were a slovenly person--storing bags of grain in the house, say, as the hippie downstairs neighbors did, and not noticing that the mice were feeding from them while breeding a colony that would only move north to my kitchen upon the crazy hippies' departure--or were otherwise welcoming vermin to share my space, this might be considered excessive. However, dear Landlord, I am not, and I am tired of dealing with this uncompensated.

If you had called an exterminator at any point during the past three years; if you had been more conscientious about the upkeep of this building (which I understand is old--and which I love for its antiquity--but the ceiling of which, to cite a single example, is about to cave in next door); or if I were feeling generally more charitable, I'd continue letting this go, as I have in the past.

As it is, I won't bill you for the--oh, 20?--mice I've already dealt with (at the price of a callus on my soul). But I will be taking $100 off my rent for next month (provided, that is, that I don't have to produce and dispose of any more corpses, although we already know at least one mouse remains). I will continue to keep my kitchen clean, disinfected, and as unattractive to mice as possible.

If you would hire an actual professional to come assess and remedy the situation, you might be able to make things better for all of us. As it is, I'm guessing that you won't, and would prefer to pay me (especially if I don't file a written complaint with the city, to which lengths a neighbor was recently driven). It's not pleasant for either of us, but as long as I'm doing someone else's job (at the expense of my own--remember that fellowship application?), I might as well receive some compensation.

Thanks, dear Landlord, and stay warm!
CëRïSë

Travelin'

Last night was very festive indeed, and this morning very early: I had a 7:15 Greyhound to catch. It was also very snowy; Champaign must have gotten about three inches of snow overnight. I got into Chicago mostly without incident, although our bus driver, upon learning from his dispatcher that he couldn't transport just the eight of us, drove us around the block and back to the station, where we had to get on a far more crowded (but thankfully also Chicago-bound) bus. I didn't have a window seat to myself with room for my backpack, but I did manage to sleep despite my gently snoring neighbor and what seemed like an extra-lurchy trip through snowy fields.

I had hoped to visit the Art Institute, but my friends wanted to outrun the impending snowstorm and thus picked me up early. The roads weren't too bad on the way home, but traffic was some of the worst we'd seen, even--and especially--in the seemingly empty stretches of Wisconsin around the Dells. It ended up taking us around eight and a half hours to get home to (also snowy) Minneapolis.

But now here I am. I ate an entire pizza and a tangerine, and still feel slightly hungry but entirely uninspired to do the things that need doing, which include completing my work for the online course, writing an abstract for a conference paper, drafting another conference paper to submit to my writing group, and getting rid of the occupied mousetrap I discovered under my sink upon returning (I caught my first last Saturday: sigh). The deadline for the first three things is tomorrow. I would far rather curl up in bed and sleep.

Cold, carbs, coffee

Apparently the wind chill was 15 below when I hopped on my bike this morning to ride to school. I had looked up bus schedules last night, but had ultimately decided to ride, as, among other reasons, I was afraid that if I didn't today I wouldn't all winter and would thus go soft.

It was surprisingly easy, actually. I still haven't purchased a balaclava, and the scarf I wrapped around my face stiffened as my breath condensed and froze solid, but the SmartWool glove liners my mom gave me for Christmas helped keep my fingers toasty, and my legs remembered how to propel me even after the weeks I've been away. Apparently, remembering how to ride a bike in sub-zero temperatures is... just like riding a bike.

My mom sent me back with lots of food, since she knew I'd emptied my fridge and cupboards before I left. She packed homemade granola, bran muffins, "square meal" cookies, and fresh cinnamon rolls with their own little tub of frosting. I tend to feel uninspired to eat when I'm cold and alone, but can usually manage to do so if there's food in front of me. My mom is awesome.

As of Monday, I'm back on the bean. I had a cup of brewed coffee with breakfast, an Americano a few hours later, and was buzzed for, as near as I can tell, at least the next fourteen hours. After the epically-delayed flight Tuesday I thought I'd have another cup, but already (still?) felt trembly enough that I forwent it and instead decided to pull through, decaffeinated, until I could just go to bed. I thought I'd need some this morning to make it through the 9:00 lecture and teaching two sections--and perhaps should have--but instead ended up waiting until just before my 3:30 seminar, through which I wasn't sure I'd otherwise stay awake and coherent. As I was picking it up at the counter, I realized it might be a bad idea to be drinking it so late. I am still awake now, but am nonetheless feeling hopeful about the possibility of falling asleep shortly.

Altogether, then, life is strange and more than a little surreal. Unfortunately, this is already the case even though two of my three seminars won't even meet for the first time until next Monday. Fortunately, every day the days get a bit longer; this will almost certainly be my last semester of full-time coursework; I have seen no trace of mice other than the two dead ones (in the two traps) under my sink yesterday; and my mom's cinnamon rolls should last for at least two more days.

Three things that are not related

...The last of which is disturbing. Reader beware!

1. Doing laundry in Minnesota in December means that the stain spray I store in my car had frozen solid, and that when I removed my fleece from the dryer where it had been tumbling on the "no heat" setting, it had frozen crunchy.

2. We ended up not even opening the carton of orange juice I'd purchased for brunch last weekend, and I generally try not to drink too much citrus juice (though I love it) because it tends to make me break out, but I finally opened it yesterday, and having a glass with breakfast makes me feel extremely luxurious.

3. On Wednesday, there was a vague bad smell in my apartment, seemingly localized in "the other room" between my living room and mini-hallway. It bothered me all day, and that night, having stayed up late grading papers and having just finished brushing my teeth and taking out my contacts, I decided to investigate. It seemed to be worst in the area around my rolling mini-filing cabinet, so I pulled it out a few inches from the wall. I gasped when I saw something dark against the wall, but was relieved to realize that it was just a small purse flashlight that had fallen behind the cabinet. When I leaned over to look on the other side of the cabinet, I didn't gasp--even though what I saw was four little mouse paws sticking out from under the edge. I did choke a little when I tried to move the cabinet and the paws moved with it, but recovered myself (after a thorough shuddering) and methodically removed the drawers of files and was then easily able to roll the cabinet away from the (extremely stationary) and now clearly noxious mouse. I didn't even have to talk myself through it out loud (as I have in the past--something along the brilliant lines of "You're okay, you're okay, you can do this, you're okay") as I put on my gloves, disposed of the body, and disinfected the floor for good measure. Apparently at least one of them found the poison my landlord left. I hope no more of them choose to die in my space--as cold-hearted as I may be.

On that which doesn't kill one making one stronger

I don't remember precisely when I first heard the adage that "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but I'm pretty sure it was sometime in high school, and quite possibly in a quarter-long class I took my sophomore year called, no joke, "Keys To Success." At the time, the saying seemed logical and fortifying; after all, I'm all for getting stronger. These days, however, I have my doubts.

First, the saying seems to exist in the present tense, but in theory it's drawing from the past and in practice is predicting the future. That is, it seems to be claiming that "Whatever isn't killing you is making you stronger," but in practice more likely means "Whatever didn't kill you in the past made you better able to deal with things that are now trying to kill you, so chances are good that you'll be able to deal with them in the future." I don't really disagree with that sentiment--but neither does it seem to advocate embracing the things that could likely kill you, the way the original does: "if it's not killing you, it must be making you stronger!"

The problem is, of course, that sometimes whatever it is it might just be killing you. And how is one to know the difference?

I've trained for and run three marathons. I've moved myself across the country at least three times, to places where I hardly knew anyone. I've finished an MA and am working on a PhD. I've commuted on my bicycle, even in the snow, for five winters. And I've recently become a hard-bitten Mouse Wars veteran. None of these things has killed me (yet), and ostensibly all have made me stronger.

But I have a tibial stress fracture. I live far from my oldest friends and my family. I have the wrinkles to show for my graduate work--and maybe my cold-weather biking! My heart has grown that much icier, creating and disposing of mouse corpses. Am I better off being "stronger"?

There's a U2 song that includes the lines "some things you shouldn't get too good at/like laughing, crying, and celebrity." Killing mice, knocking out papers in the early hours of the morning, convincing oneself it's a good idea to run 15+ miles on weekend mornings or surf one's bike through snowdrifts, and moving away from places one has learned to call home are probably things one shouldn't get too good at.

And what about having one's heart broken? If it doesn't kill one, it must be making one stronger, right? Or is it another of those things one shouldn't get too good at, because it does end in killing one a little bit--and without the advantages of fabulous abs and quads, or mad mouse-disposal skills?

So if one is not trying new things based on the hopes that if one survives them, one will be stronger, what should be the motivation for adventure and productivity? For a few years, I've been trying out the philosophy that simply being afraid of something is not, by itself, a good enough reason not to do it. And then there's Rilke: "But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious." The serious things are worth doing anyway.

Life is killing all of us, but I guess that shouldn't stop us from getting as much as possible out of it first--stronger or not.

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."

Che profuma!*

I've had a fairly ridiculously sensitive sense of smell for as long as I can remember, and at fairly predictable intervals it's even more sensitive than usual.

Today I rode to school along Franklin, and experienced a veritable smörgåsbord of smells--in addition to the usual exhaust fumes, I smelled the bakery, cigarette smoke from a passing car, pedestrians' cologne and perfume, and spices and incense from small stores. The ride home, along the bike path, was even better; we had unseasonably warm and wonderful weather, and I rode slowly, savoring the smell of warm trees and sunshine, slightly tinged with smoke.

Then I got home, and as soon as I opened the door, I knew something was wrong. My apartment smelled, and not like warm trees and sunshine.

(Please feel free to stop reading here. Seriously. I'm sorry my posts have been so unpleasant of late.)

I had just been talking to the playwright-hippie-downstairs-neighbor outside, and when I told him I'd killed nine mice this weekend, he said, with conviction, "Oh, there are more."
"More?" I cried. "I killed NINE. Nine mice!"
"Based on how much poop we've been seeing as we've been moving, there has to be a lot of them." Then he revealed that they'd found a bag of cat food in the basement, and had thankfully removed it. Apparently not before, however, it had fed the colony they'd spawned, who had then moved north (to the killing fields of my kitchen).

After that exchange, it's definitely possible I was feeling extra-neurotic when I got to my own apartment and thought it smelled. That self-reflection was further reinforced when I proceeded through each room (after opening all the windows), sniffing everything (which is quite the experience when you're feeling olfactorily enhanced).

Once again, I knocked, grim and pale, on my neighbor's door. She came over and, happily for my sense of my sanity but unhappily for that of which the situation bodes, confirmed that the place smelled. At first, she didn't notice anything; after a few more sniffs, she wrinkled her nose.

"I think it smells of death," I suggested helpfully.

We confirmed that under my sink smells mouse-y... but it hasn't revealed itself as the locus of the stench, which seems to have intensified in the past few hours, despite the open windows (thank goodness for unseasonable weather). Those of you who have experience with these sorts of things know that this particular odor (death) eerily defies being pinpointed to a certain location.

This winter, there was a terrible smell in the TA office, and both I and the woman with whom I was TAing that semester were convinced it was something dead, despite the protestations of the other grads. Neither of us, sensitive sniffers notwithstanding, could locate the source, however. The office eventually (blessedly) stopped stinking, but it was only weeks later that a friend (accidentally!) found the corpse of the mouse who'd cuddled the warm power supply and met his end.

The possibility of this stench is why I haven't used poison on these little bastards, and now I appear to be stuck with it anyway. The injustice!

At my neighbor's suggestions, I called my landlord about it (and my discovery that, with my shoddily installed cabinets, there's a mysterious space behind my cupboards that I can't get to but the vermin apparently can). We had to laugh, though; he's both a man and a chain smoker, so he won't smell anything. Still, he does like to keep us happy. Here's hopin'.

*I finally learned in Italy that "Che profuma," depending on the punctuation, means both "What's that smell?" and "What a (nice) smell (mmmmmm)!"

Insult to injury

I baked two loaves of bread on Thursday, and gave one to my neighbor to thank her for lending me her cat. Yesterday, I found the mouse in mine and threw the whole thing away.

I baked another two last night, and although I haven't in the past even always wrapped them up overnight, given recent events, I thought I should take some precautions. I wrapped both in plastic wrap and then in aluminum foil and set them on the cooling rack on my counter. I hadn't taken out the trash, and sort of thought the gnawed loaf there would be more tempting than one in a full metal jacket, as it were.

I was wrong, as I'm sure you've already guessed. Once again a mouse had tunneled straight into the loaf, having chewed through both the aluminum foil and the plastic wrap. Thankfully this time, I didn't find him inside the loaf. I did find him in the mousetrap under the sink.

My theory is that, savvy as he has previously proven himself, he couldn't resist the peanut butter, but had so gorged himself on freshly baked bread that he couldn't move quickly enough to escape. This was a portly mouse.

And perhaps (fingers crossed!) the last. I have neither heard nor seen traces of them since; the eighth of the snap traps I purchased is still baited and waiting under the sink just in case, but with nine down, I'm hoping I'm done.

The Great Mouse War

Or, War and Mice, a Tolstoyesque epic (or at least epic-length post)

Firstly: in case you weren't already aware of this, I am a sensitive, conscientious, vegetarian pacifist and abhor violence of any sort.

Secondly: I am posting these details because I wish I had known yesterday what I know now, and because last night's Google search didn't give me much of the help and moral support I sought. Please don't feel obligated to read this rather gruesome post, Dear Regulars--you really probably just want to skip it altogether--but if you have arrived here via a search for help in a similar situation, I hope my post can maybe help a little.

I mentioned yesterday that I appear to have a mouse problem; my neighbor's cat caught one of them, but then I watched her watch at least two more, and not catch those ones. I called my landlord yesterday evening for instructions on how to change the bulbs in a certain fixture in my apartment, and happened to mention the mice. He said that this is the time of year for them, and that in this building they always go to the apartment that doesn't have a cat. He agreed that traps were the way to go, and said that glue traps (of which I'd never heard) were the most effective--that the mice's limbs and snout become stuck and they suffocate. I remembered my family having bad luck with snap traps when I was a kid; the sound of poor Uncle Louie (as we for some reason dubbed the offending mouse) dragging the trap with him behind the refrigerator remains with me. I also hadn't had any success with the live traps I used in Bowling Green. Glue traps, falsely, sounded like a good idea, so on my landlord's endorsement, I bought a pair of them.

Do not buy glue traps!

It's true that they catch mice. Mine caught one within the first 15 minutes. It didn't hold it securely enough, however, and I actually watched as the mouse was able to use the ledge at the back of the cupboard as leverage to free himself. I was a bit relieved, honestly; I certainly didn't want to deal with him. I did leave the traps in place, though, while I was out for the evening.

When I returned, I could hear a thumping the moment I stepped in the door, and my heart sank. When I opened the cupboard, it was even worse; I'd caught two in the same trap, stuck side by side in the same half of the tray, and both were alive. It was 1:30 a.m., I was alone in my apartment, and my neighbor was, I assume, sleeping soundly in preparation for the half marathon to which I was to give her a ride at 8:30.

I had no idea what to do. The mice, who would periodically shake frantically in an attempt to extricate themselves, didn't look particularly close to expiring, and I rued ever having bought the glue traps. Seriously, what was I thinking? David Sedaris has a (less-than-inspiring) story about drowning a mouse a trap hadn't quite killed, and that was how--it was rumored--pests were dispatched at Big Lake. I didn't want to drown the mice, but I didn't know what else to do. I really wished I hadn't bought the glue traps. I threw the empty one away.

Thankfully, my friend Nathan, one of the calmest, kindest boys I knew in high school, was online, and I messaged him for advice. He was sympathetic and kind, and it was wonderfully reassuring to have some human contact. He figured the fastest way to put the mice out of their misery would be to hit them with something heavy; he got on The Google and read that it could take them days to die on their own. I was doubly convinced that I had to end their suffering, but the thought of inflicting direct violence upon them was appalling. What would I use? What if I missed, and just wounded them? Would I have to look?

The upshot of the conversation was that I realized that drowning them would, for me, be far easier, cleaner, and perhaps even quicker, than bludgeoning them--and that since I had to do something about it before I went to bed, it was time to act. In David Sedaris' story, and a few I found online, the process was protracted and dreadful because the trap floated and/or the mouse swam. I decided, therefore, to use a small container of water (I used a plastic ice cream container that I've used to store leftovers but didn't mind throwing away) and to physically submerge the trap if necessary. I put on my gloves, filled the container and set it on the porch, and steeled myself to move the mice. Getting them from under the sink to the porch was definitely the worst part, because they wriggled so hard I was afraid I'd drop the trap, which I held gingerly at the far edge. Once outside, though, I plunged the tray into the water and turned it so that I just saw the back of the tray, and suddenly everything was still and silent. I crouched on the porch, freezing in my pajama pants and T-shirt, holding the tray below the surface of the water and squeezing my eyes shut as I counted out two minutes. It seemed like a good idea to hold it, just in case, although there was no movement and the tray remained submerged when I removed my hand.

I went inside to give it a few more minutes, and then grabbed a plastic bag and went back outside. I carried the tub downstairs and poured the water out on the lawn without having to look at the contents. Then I slipped the whole thing into the plastic bag, tied it up, and put it in the trash, with infinite relief.

But this morning, there were more mice.

I heard one under the sink, and when I investigated, discovered it was in my trashcan, under the liner. I took the whole thing outside, and when the mouse poked its head out at the bottom of the stairs, I dropped the trashcan and let it escape... straight back into my house, probably.

So I rode to the hardware store and got snap traps this time--two two-packs. According to my landlord, there's "the genocide" and then things settle down. I didn't want to do poison, and for all their potential failings, snap-traps did seem quick, clean, and blessedly decisive compared to the glue traps.

I was very nervous, but did manage to get the traps set, baited, and positioned under my sink. I caught the first mouse within the first five minutes, and another one almost immediately thereafter. I went through all four traps (I couldn't bear emptying and reusing them) in about two hours and went back to the store for four more. So far, I've gone through a total of six snap-traps, all well-positioned, quick, clean, kills. Twice the savvier mice have managed to steal the bait without triggering the trap, and once the trap snapped without catching anything (three times it snapped as I was positioning it, which terrified me).

Unfortunately, I have apparently killed off the smaller, meeker mice, and have since been terrorized by one or two larger, bold ones. Unlike the others, these ones aren't confined to the area under the sink and behind the refrigerator. One actually darted in and out of my bedroom, and one made it up on the kitchen counter. The very worst, though, elicited a fairly blood-curdling scream from your increasingly high-strung narrator. That was seeing a wriggling tail coming out of the freshly-baked and hardly-eaten plastic-wrapped loaf of bread on my counter. The tail was attached to a very fat mouse, who emerged from the mouse-shaped hole he'd gnawed at my initial gasp and fled at the subsequent shriek.

At the moment, however, all is quiet. Perhaps my nemeses have retreated downstairs, to my hippie neighbors' mouse sanctuary. I ran into that neighbor (who, being an artist and married to a playwright, is very cool, just not very tidy) on my way to buy traps, and discovered that in the process of packing things for their upcoming move, she had discovered all sorts of mouse evidence. Everywhere. I think they have spawned a colony, which makes me very unhappy indeed, since our walls are permeable and I'm the only other unit without a cat.

Earlier this afternoon it felt like a siege, so I'm glad to have a respite. The last two traps are baited and set; my current body-count is eight. I sure hope this ends soon.

Mom & April, you might want to skip this one, or, The Drama

So recently I've been hearing phantom scritchings and scratchings in my kitchen. That is, they were phantom until yesterday. Yesterday I came face to snout with the perpetrator, who was perched on the edge of the garbage can under my sink and who didn't even have the good sense to run after I opened the door. That is, until I shrieked; then he skittered back into the depths from whence he came. I sat back down at my computer, figuring I'd scared him away at least for a while, but moments later, there he was again and we replayed the scene.

Trembling, I knocked on my neighbor's door, and she was already scooping Sappho up as she asked, "You wanna borrow my cat?" We brought her over, and I was embarrassed at the state of my under-sink cupboard. I keep my recycling there, so it was crowded with paper bags. It was dusty, and my murine visitors had also left traces of their debauchery. Sapph did some stalking, but we decided to bring her back after I'd opened things up a bit.

I pulled out all the bags, took my recycling to the street, and cleaned and disinfected the cupboard floor and my trashcan (they had gnawed a hole in the bottom of the liner, apparently to get to the tasty coffee grounds and squash peels). With the formerly cave-like interior now bright, shiny, and smelling of Lysol (and, I hoped, replete with lingering cat memories; they'd had ample opportunity to see and hear Sappho), I closed the doors and sat back down to work.

But they came back. Once again, I threw open the doors and yelled. I left the doors open this time when I sat back down. It came back again.

So I knocked on my neighbor's door again, and this time we brought not just Sappho, but her litter box, food, and water; she was going to sleep over. I picked her up and dropped her in front of the sink, where she almost instantly detected the scratching and went into huntress mode. Meaning, she crouched in and just outside of the cupboard, staring, for at least an hour. Intently watching the mice run along the back of the cupboard.

Finally, one comes to the very edge of the cupboard, nose to nose with Sappho, and she pounces. I close my eyes, and when I look up, she has the little guy in her mouth. I run to the back door, fling it open, and frantically call to Sappho to come. She trots defiantly in the opposite direction. I open the front door, and am relieved that she exits and heads down the stairs to the basement. I cross the landing to my neighbor's apartment, knock on her door, and am breathlessly trying to explain what has happened when Sappho prances through the open door behind me and into the apartment, the mouse still in her mouth.

We both shriek and jump back, which may startle Sappho; she drops the mouse. It makes a beeline for the heat machine, from under which Sapph is unable to extricate it. My neighbor grimly cranks up the heat.

But the transported mouse seems to have vanished; Sappho gives up circling the heat machine and we get on the floor but are unable to locate the mouse. We figure if it is somehow still in my neighbor's apartment, Sapph will get it eventually. There are still mice in my apartment, so Sappho comes back to my place for the night.

I feared there would be corpses this morning (apparently she doesn't generally eat her catches), but when her yowls awakened me this morning I was relieved not to find any; last night's drama was plenty for me, and apparently one conquest was sufficient for Sapph. When I returned her to my neighbor this morning, we decided that traps would probably be more efficient.