Mouse Killer

The poor mouse sat in my apartment for hours yesterday. I called a bunch of my friends and everyone told me that I had to, like, bludgeon it, that that was the only humane thing to do. But I didn't think I would be able to do that, so when the maintenance guy finally got my note and knocked on the door, I asked him about it.

He was like, "No, I'm just going to put it in the trash." And I said that I didn't think that was right, because it was suffering already, and he just said, "Well, a lot of things suffer in this world." I was sort of gawping unattractively at him then so he just took the bag from my hand and walked off. I made one more attempt to get him to kill it but he was dead set on doing nothing of any value, and I was unable to get him to change his mind. I feel pretty bad about it. I suppose at that point I really could have grabbed the bag from his hand and just told him that I would take care of it myself, but for whatever reason I didn't, which is pretty shitty. Now all I can do is just prey that the thing is dead already, and that it was quick.

Those sticky traps are supposed to be more humane than the regular snapping ones, and I guess that's true if the snapping one doesn't hit the mouse in a fatal place, but honestly I don't see a huge improvement. I was talking to my dad, and he said that maybe I should invest in some cage-type things, in case this ever happens again, since now I see how crappily the building is at dealing with these things. This is a good point. I can now add "mouse cages" to my list of unpleasant items necessary for apartment living, along with "industrial-strength roach spray" and "mildew killer."

Once the mouse was officially out of my apartment, I cleaned really well. I hadn't vacuumed in a long time. It's funny how when I lived in those group houses during college, I was all annoyed at the people who never cleaned up after themselves, and now here I am, living alone, a big gross slob. However, in my defense, those people were filthy. I mean, I don't dust or vacuum very often, but I am not to the point where I leave pans of scrambled eggs out for weeks, or take off my band-aids in the shower and leave them there, or try to get around trash duty by hiding my old pizza boxes in the OVEN. God, when I think back on it all, it's amazing that none of those apartments ever had mice.

I slept a LOT last night, which was great. I still have some photos from Phoenix that I want to post, so hopefully I will get around to that this evening.