Oh no! A Mouse!

(February 8, 2010) On Sunday night, I discovered a mouse in our apartment. I am not sure anymore whether it really was a mouse. Maybe I had been studying too much for that awful bar exam. Or maybe I was getting a little lonely because Annelien was in Europe and my mind’s eye created an imaginary friend. Who knows? All I know is that I started screaming all of a sudden, ran over to the neighbor, couldn’t find him home, jumped in the car and gunned to the nearest Safeway. I really don’t like Safeway, but Whole Foods is so humane that I wasn’t sure they would have the ammunition that I all of a sudden needed so badly. At Safeway, the vermin aisle was full of people who were eager to share their life stories and to counsel me. If anything, the selection was enormous: blue poison powder, green mouse glue, animal friendly traps, you name it. Against the advice of the anti-mouse consultants gathered around me, I picked the most friendly-looking traps, because I do think it’s horrible to kill innocent animals. To make things worse, awful childhood memories started haunting me. When I was little, my mother always told me that dirty people get mice in their house. Hmm, did I drop too many bread crumbs in the kitchen when Annelien was not looking? Or do we just live in a big city where mice are inevitable because the buildings are so authentic and charming that they come with little pets. We’ll probably never know. Anyway, that night, I set up the traps, using my Santa Cruz organic dark roasted crunchy peanut butter to attract them. At least, the mouse's last bite will be tasty.