Disposing of the Body

I wrote that Ana put out two glue traps and, sure enough, Thursday night captured one, and because these were bigger size (the size of an ice cube tray), I purposely left it out for Friday night as well thinking maybe I can get another. Plus, there was a small part of me, I admit, that thought that was a good reason to do nothing.

So this morning, I totally wasted time, procrastinated, dragged my feet, stayed downstairs in my bedroom fretting about it until about 3 pm when hunger drove me upstairs to deal with it. This event was not without tears, not sobbing, but definite teary eyes and poor, pitiful me.

The sane part of me reasoned I'm stronger than this, I've done worse, don't make this more than it is, but still I couldn't do it. The glue trap with critter -- definitely dead, thank God, was right inside my kitchen by the garbage can.

I came upstairs, made it no further than my living room and sat there not able to go further. I just couldn't do it.

I remember, years ago, when I had a dead one in the crawl space under my stairs that was stinking up my bedroom and I was searching for it with the creepy-crawly willies that I finally called Mary and I had the phone in one hand and whatever tool I was using to find it with the other. At one point, when I saw it, I let out this ew-ew-ew-ew noise and Mary yelled, "Did it come back to life?"

She was serious, and thinking about that always makes me laugh. So what good is it to have a best friend if you can't be your stupidest self with them? I called Mary, thinking she would probably not be home, but she was. My voice was cracking and Mary was being her most patient and helpful self.

After discussing various strategies, I told Mary I was willing to do step one which was to take the wad of paper towels I'd been clutching and throw it on top of the glue trap. That's a strategy I'd used before: drop paper towels, tamp down with broom, sweep into box, put box in garbage bag, remove garbage.

I put the phone down -- Mary later said she expected to hear ew ew ew screaming on my part... I glanced at it and saw that the mouse was really at one end of the trap. So I dropped the towels down on top (now at least I didn't have to look at it) -- and then felt brave enough for step 2 so I grabbed a roll of aluminum foil in the box that was sitting on the counter and tamped the paper towels down with that. I knew the paper had stuck.

So then I wanted Mary to be proud of me. I felt brave enough to actually pick up the non-mouse end of the trap and drop it in the garbage. I had resisted anything fancy as I was afraid I'd somehow drop the glue trap and have it land glue-side down on the floor.  I picked it up, dropped it in the empty, lined garbage bin and then triumphantly went back to the phone.

I reported success to Mary and I was home free (or so I thought) at this point. I was sitting there talking to Mary about other things. All of a sudden, I see a mouse, a live one, running along the baseboard. It was so discouraging. I kept talking and then saw it run in the opposite direction. I left well enough alone for now. I've done enough mouse things for one day, but my motto is going to be "take a positive action."

On Friday, I spent some time researching "mouse proof" on the Internet and I swear, I could skip steps 1 though 8 -- things like "get rid of piles of newspaper" -- I have always thought, and still do, that the mice in my apartment are passing through only -- I can go months, and sometimes years, without seeing one and then all of a sudden, bam, there they are.

I did read in my research that a cat is not a good pest control device as they tend to just play with, not kill the mouse. I remember reading years ago that just the smell of a cat will keep mice out so I was hoping to find "eau de cat" somewhere but I guess that's useless.

Of course, I did take the garbage out so one down, who knows how many more to go?

To be continued...