Mouse Hunt

I killed a mouse Thursday. Snap trap and plum. Only I didn’t kill the mouse, it somehow set of the snap trap and escaped with the plum. I should have known then it had an accomplice.


I killed a mouse last night, this time for real. I moved the snap trap and used smaller bait: just enough muenster cheese to cover the bait part of the trap. It seems to have worked, because the mouse was very dead in the morning.

I would and could have set down glue traps, covered traps, other things that require less contact with the mouse, but these are actually less humane and less effective. As for a live trap, I live in the city. I’m not driving over an hour so some urban-adapted little shitter can go get eaten by his more wilderness-prone cousins.

So ding, dong the mouse was dead and I went about cleaning up the disgusting poop it managed to leave under my kitchen sink and behind my kitchen cabinets.

All mopped, every surface disinfected, so what the fuck still smells like mouse shit?

I’m not happy I now recognize the smell of mouse shit. I have nose that rivals most of the animal kingdom, a trait that’s been entertaining in my antiques/vintage acquisition. I already think cling wrap has a smell and my ice maker has a smell, so adding “mouse poop” to the olfactory equation has me homicidal and I already killed the mouse.

Or so I thought.

No mouse is an island.

A smaller, completely black mouse darted across the kitchen tonight. Darted across my freshly mopped floors. I yelled and I banged on things and I told it I was buying a shot gun. It seemed lost. It went for the washing machine and tried to come back out again with no real direction. Maybe I killed off the mouse responsible for acquiring food and making poop, and now this mouse is looking for answers. If I could show this mouse the door and no other mice or bugs or vermin ever crept across my threshold again, I would show this mouse my mercy. Otherwise, I want to blow it to hell.

I fear my kitchen floor boards don’t make it all the way to the walls and there’s a zoo living in what I judge to be my downstairs neighbor’s heating duct, creeping up into my kitchen at night to feed and poop.

My dog is useless.

Does Illinois require a license to buy a flame-thrower?