"Speaking from experience ... you know it's not just ONE mouse, right?"

For those who are squeamish or cried at Bambi or keep mice at pets (quelle horreur!), you may want to skip this post. Okay? Okay.

Let us rewind to last week.

Ms. K and I discovered, much to our dismay, that we had a mouse. Unfortunately the burden fell to me to take care of our little visitor, and by "take care of" I don't mean cater to his every whim, but ensure that he would have the least painful death possible. (Before you squeal and post links to no-kill mouse traps in the comments section, I will remind you that you can get meningitis from mouse droppings and die.)

To make a long story short, I purchased some newfangled snap traps from the hardware, baited them with peanut butter, and went to bed with fingers crossed. Lo and behold it worked, having discovered a dead mouse in the trap the next morning.

Ms. K and I rejoiced! It was safe to go into the kitchen again! I felt a surge of something that I can only explain as primordial hunter pride. (Yes, I'm a woman. Yes, I killed a little mouse. But it is a disease vector! I win!)

But before I could rest on my laurels, I discovered another mouse in the kitchen. And I saw it scurry behind the stove, it's little tail wriggling out of view.

Shit! It had a friend! I may or may not have shrieked.

For the next day I stalked that mouse. I followed its trail, figured which point it was using to access the counter top, and created a funnel in which to direct it towards the snap trap.

In short, it worked. (I'm purposely glazing over the part of the story where the mouse doesn't die right away and it was up to me to put it out of its misery. With a cast iron pan.)

Over a week later and no more mice.

To rid yourself of any unpleasant imagery, I leave you all with the life and death of DJ Roomba.

"Maybe we should move again?"

Shit, dudes. We got ourselves a mouse in the new house. And not some cute talking mouse that secretly makes you delicious French dinners, but a disease spreading creature that poops on kitchen countertops and God knows what else.

When we moved into the apartment and I inspected the nooks and crannies of my new home, I suspiciously found steel wool in the strangest of places -- as in the radiators, linen closet, and the door jams. I remember wondering why some weirdo previous tenant had left steel wool everywhere?

Oh right, to prevent mice from entering small cracks in the walls. Duh! Too bad I threw some it away, which may or may not have contributed to our new houseguest's arrival.

Ms. K is not taking the news very well and since I'm the bug killer in the relationship, my duties now extend to mouse removal. Unfortunately for her, I'm at work and she's having to face the mouse hunt on her own while sending me panicked updates via email.

"Honey! You have to fix it!"

"I am afraid of that bad thing! OMG. I do not like this! Also, it
puts a dent in my cleaning plans!"

"Honey, I feel like you are not being the appropriate amount of
alarmed/ upset about this!"

"I need him to go away now!"

This will be fun to deal with when I get home tonight!