Sunday, February 20, 2011

Of Mice and Me


I was going to put "the picture" (you'll see) here, but I can't stomach it, so here's DJ Dangermouse, the only mouse I let in my house.



            Ten years ago I decided to stop killing. Sort of. I wear leather shoes (more comfortable, last longer), I swat flies and crush the powdery hay-colored moths that ruin my suits and sweaters. Otherwise I'm like one of those saints with animals crawling all over them.
            We all draw lines, somewhere, around what we will and will not kill. For a lot of people that line stops at other people. For others it includes them. In my family and the community in which I was raised the safety umbrella protected certain animals—usually small mammals that have been quote-unquote domesticated. My point is what a person deems killable is a personal preference, and debate is pointless. No one can say why we shouldn't eat cat or dog but squirrel and rabbit are food, or why we consume beef and lamb and pig but not horse. It probably all comes down to trial and error and use-value. Still, I have to think we could breed delicious pug meat if we wanted, but I guess it's not a necessity.
            Faced with a confusing argument and a penchant for overempathizing, I opted out and became vegetarian. I decided I didn't know how to sort out food from pets so, except for a few insects that will not stop flying at my face or eating my stuff and who totally started it, I try not to harm anything that has the ability to be afraid.
The reason I am telling you this is because I’ve had to make a fairly glaring exception—one that calls into question my whole belief system. I should have my card revoked. There is blood on my hands, and after a point my claim of vegetarianist practice becomes pure semantics.
The battle between predators and varmints is a storied affair. It is the reason Exterminator is an actual job title. It is the premise of much of the twentieth century’s most beloved animated programs and comic strips. It is a classic underdog tale to which we can all relate as children—the small, vulnerable prey is victimized by an aggressor who he perpetually outwits using guile and improvisation. The predator is a foil, a metaphor for inept technology, bumbling authority, or chaos. Nobody roots for the cat/wolf/coyote/Fudd.
            I noticed something about these shows: they are a singular example in which the protagonist is also the bad guy. It is the predator the camera follows, shifting from scene to scene as we watch them concoct ever more elaborate ploys to attain their goal. And as we age, these agents of violence and hate are who we become. Shedding our ability to feel pity for most other beings, we mature into adults and take our place atop the food chain. The cartoon predators are the stars of the show because they are us.

            As a boy I owned rodents. I had a plucky gerbil named Grapefruit and, after his passing, a hamster whose name I've forgotten, perhaps for the best. I played with them after school, constructing mazes and obstacles from a salvage yard's worth of Legos. I held them and stroked them and tried to take them places in my pockets. I thought of them as my friends.
            I sobbed when Grapefruit killed and ate his companion, my brother's gerbil Starlight, and the litter of pups they'd produced without our knowledge and out of wedlock. It was confusing to a boy. How could something so small and cute inflict so much damage, produce such violent spattering? I still cared for Grapefruit afterwards but, like a prison liaison, I was wary of him too. Little did I know this was just a taste of how much destruction an animal the size of a Matchbox car can inflict.
            When my wife and I moved to Albuquerque we discovered we had mice that first winter. It was a minor annoyance—a bit of poop, some food was nibbled upon—but as long as we were careful to seal things in jars it wasn't a big deal. We stayed true to our peaceful outlook. We cleaned and complained, but it seemed mean to try to hunt and kill another animal just for trying to get by. At the most basic level of need is food, and the mouse was no different than us. We even referred to him as Mouseykins.
            However, our plan failed. The mouse, cut off from food, didn't leave. He played dirty, chewing the plastic edges of our Tupperware, shredding the labels from various oils and vinegars rendering them unidentifiable, even spoiling things that are not so much food as ingredients—red pepper flake, baking powder, dried corn husks, the flaky pages of seaweed used to wrap a sushi roll—and so we began to do a bit of research.
            I am well aware of the mousetrap, the oft-cited quintessential invention, the thing everyone is always trying to improve, which seems to point to just how damaging mouse problems really are. But, unless I'm misunderstanding, I thought the point of the saying was to demonstrate that something very simple and effective need not be improved. Nevertheless, there are all manner of traps on the market, which fall into one of three categories.
            There are, as one expects, the killy spring-loaded kind that crush and pin the mouse to a plank of balsa wood. Then there are so-called No Kill traps meant for catching and subsequent releasing (which doesn't so much solve mouse infestation as delay it for a few days while the mouse recuperates to mount a second wave of attack. That or you find out your neighbors suddenly have a mouse problem). And then there are mouse deterrents.
These are tiny speakers you plug into the wall outlets. They supposedly emit an inaudible (to humans) frequency that is unpleasant enough (to mice) that they will remain out of earshot. Two things about this: (1) unpleasant sounds are not a foolproof deterrent when one is in search of food as evidenced by the existence of Indian restaurants. It amounts to unpleasantness on par with ugly wallpaper, something that radiates and surrounds you but has no direct influence over your appetite. (2) The speakers weren't inaudible. I know this because this is what we tried first. Our landlord had used them in our apartment in Chicago and as far as I know we didn't have mice.
            It took a while for me to pin it down but I had been feeling irritable and distracted. At this time I was spending long days at home studying for school. I was having a particularly unrestful day when I became aware, suddenly, of a slight but very annoying sound. I tried to ignore it for a while but it was one of those things that, once it gains notice, cannot be unnoticed, like seeing a ghost or realizing the girl you're hitting on has herpes.
            Soon I started passing through the apartment attempting to locate the source. It was definitely louder toward the back half of the house, but I wasn't able to think of anything that would produce a whine. Finally I decided it must be coming from outside, maybe a neighbor rehearsing with their noisecore band, and I figured it would eventually cease.
            It did not.
            Pretty soon I became convinced it was in fact coming from inside. More specifically it was coming from the kitchen. I began pressing my ear to various appliances—the toaster, the water heater, the fridge. I even tried sort of shaking the refrigerator, to no effect, until I thought better of it. Don't people die at home in this way; they're found crumpled beneath something heavy? I think I read that more people are killed each year by refrigerators than by sharks. Or maybe that's vending machines—something about their smug silence after they cheat you out of a Snickers provokes a body. At any rate, as a large appliance pitches forward I wonder if there is that slow-motion epiphany, as when you lean too far back in a chair, when you realize you've made an error, and now you are going to be killed by a robotic barista, and you are embarrassed and terrified and, in a way, would have preferred a death at the mouth of a shark since at least that sounds sort of heroic and doesn’t come across as greedy.
            No matter. A closer inspection revealed no sonic difference whatsoever with regards to my proximity to the fridge. Exasperated I whirled about looking for a clue.
            The unblinking red LED of the mouse speaker looked back at me with the same remorseless expression as HAL 9000, its ceaseless gaze all but confessing. Rather than attempt to hide, by having the gall to stare I knew it was guilty. The lady doth protest too much.
            A quick unplugging confirmed my suspicions as the piercing eye extinguished along with the pulsing whine. It wasn't working anyway; our cabinets were still strewn with feces. Into the trash it went.

            Our next step was more forceful. Darby stapled screen mesh into the backs of our cabinets to try to block his entry. We also decided to get some traps. As well-meaning vegetarians we selected the No Kill variety. It was an uncomplicated system—a downward-angled tube that the mouse would enter to retrieve the bait would tilt on its fulcrum, like a teeter-totter, as the mouse traveled through to the back. This action activated a hinged door to swing shut behind, effectively sealing our fuzzy intruder within.
            Well, the Cask of Amontillado this was not. For weeks the trap sat in disuse, yawning. I was reminded of setting traps for our cats when I was a kid, tying a string to a ruler and using it to prop up a laundry basket. As before, I guess I expected quicker results. Not that I blame the mouse. I wouldn't go tunneling at night into a suddenly-appeared cave no matter how "natural" the peanut butter.
            All the while we became more frustrated that our humane attempts to correct the problem were ineffective. We grew weary of wiping and bleaching surfaces and removing rice-sized droppings. To make things worse we'd been tipped off about something called Hantavirus, a rodent-transmitted disease that like melts your lungs or something and is normally only found in third-world countries and New Mexico. Morale was sinking.
            The thing about a mouse problem is it materializes instantly, and the mice are all but invisible. They scavenge at night, leaving behind only crumbs. It's a bit like Santa if Santa crapped every few feet. This means it's hard to know just how bad the problem is. (As a friend put it, "You don't have a mouse, you have ten.") And it can seemingly stop and start. This has been especially true in the warm climate here. The mice move indoors in the winter. The rest of the year we wouldn't hear from them. So we didn't think much of it when the mouse season ended.
            A while later—a few weeks maybe, which tells you how often we clean—I was getting out the cleaning supplies from beneath the sink, when I noticed the mouse trap had been sprung.
            Uh oh.
            The trap wasn't super well designed. It had a few moving parts, but was no more complex than a toilet paper tube. Its incline was scant enough that the peculiar drift in our apartment's foundation—a proud crown that flows steadily downward as one travels south—had activated the trap sans souris in the past. Finally we'd put the trap in the cabinet under the sink because it seemed to be the only place level enough. And, since we clean so infrequently, we promptly forgot about it.
            As I lifted the trap, the consequences of what we'd done set in. The trap had a heft to it that told me it had indeed done its job, only I didn't hear the accompanying scratching and skittering I might have heard if a live mouse was suddenly hoisted in the air inside its lightless sarcophagus.
            I felt awful. In our attempt to spare his life we carelessly inflicted a far more torturous death upon the mouse. He'd starved or died of dehyration. Probably a bit of both. Our naive belief that we were doing the right thing backfired, as they say, big time. We'd been irresponsible, neglecting to hold up our agreement to split duty on the verbs Catch & Release. With a heavy heart I walked to the dumpster and deposited mouse and trap in a single motion, a burial in a sea of trash.

            Back at square one I decided to use the best mousetrap there is. No, not my cat who is so disinterested I am guessing he is either allergic or paid off. I'm referring to myself. Armed with an upside-down plastic bowl, I stalked the little devils, clearing the countertops to provide an unobstructed view.
            I had a few close calls, seeing the mouse scoot under the washing machine or oven. Occasionally I could flush him out with Darby's help as the dogs looked on in puzzlement. Each time I was a bit too slow.
            I noticed my body would react immediately—somewhere in my nerve centers the word mouse! was being transmitted before my wits would settle enough to realize that the bogey had been sighted. I would startle and stagger back a step or two before I could advance on it with my mousin' bowl.
            What made me think a person could catch a mouse anyway? Mice are, by their very nature, elusive and charming. As their pursuers we are clumsy and foolish and far too inept to do anything but injure ourselves. I began to lose hope.
            And then I did the unthinkable.
            From the other room I heard rustling. Creeping like a burglar I entered the kitchen and flipped on the light. The mouse dashed behind the flour jar, which I moved. It dashed along the sink and behind the coffee maker, which I moved. Out of room, at the end of the counter, it dashed under the toaster oven.
            This was fortunate because we were directly below our cabinet of drinking glasses. I slowly reached up and took one, keeping my eyes on the toaster for any attempts to flee. Only, when I moved in for my bounty I saw he had vanished. Our toaster has a good inch of clearance to see underneath. There was poop and stray specks of blackened toast, but nothing so conspicuous as a mammal. I peered through the glass door thinking he might have been able to crawl inside.
            For a moment I imagined turning the toaster on and cooking him out. I pictured the mouse aflame, saying he was so so sorry. War does funny things to a man. But the mouse wasn't in the toaster. Nor was he under it. Sliding it away from the wall revealed nothing. The mouse had some kind of trap door or escape pod I didn't know about.
            Soon my wife came to see what all the crashing and swearing was about.
            "The mouse was right there under the toaster, but it's gone!"
            Naturally my wife bent down to see underneath. Implausibly, she said, "There he is!"
            "What!?"
            She was correct. A mouse matching the description of our suspect had reappeared under the toaster. As I moved to slide the toaster clear, glass cupped confidently overhead, he repeated his clever maneuver. But this time I witnessed what he'd done. He hadn't crawled up into the toaster. He had crawled up into the feet of the toaster—cheap, hollow plastic archways that they are—and was peeking out at me from his snug shelter.
            I grabbed the appliance and held it aloft. The mouse tried to scramble further inside but he had just enough room to hang on. I began to shake the machine as carbonized breadcrumbs rained on the countertop.
            As if appealing to my soft side, the mouse began to let out long, frightened squeaks. To an impartial observer, an enraged man trying to rattle a crying rodent out of a toaster would probably look a little crazy, but we were so close to victory. I kept shaking.
            Suddenly he dropped from the toaster and ran to the corner. Before we could react to contain him he ran (get this) up the wall! I guess I'm not too surprised, but I didn't know mice could scale brick. In a flash he darted into the space between the wall and our dish shelves, his tail disappearing like slurped spaghetti.
            Stunned, we just stood there waiting to see what might happen next. Luckily the mouse was as curious as we were and he appeared again, inches from our faces, his nose sniffing spastically from the gap.
            Thinking quickly I grabbed, of all things, a nearby ruler (only in a house full of artists...) and began shaving it down along the gap, hoping to flush him out. It worked and a moment later he dropped the foot and a half to the counter.
            Ready, for once, the octagonal drinking glass crashed down over the mouse with a satisfying clop. We exhaled, eyes wide, like we'd just reached the end of a long race. Watching him circumnavigate the interior for any weak points I was reminded of the curious and sweet way my pet rodents would play in their plastic labyrinths.
            "He's pretty cute," I said.
            "Isn't he?" Darby agreed.
            For a minute I started to feel sorry that we'd worked so hard to torment such a tiny thing. But we followed through. We walked him a few blocks up the street to an alley known for its extensive catalog of used mattresses, sprouting against the walls of garages like large, flat fungi. I stooped and removed the postcard I'd been holding to the glass bottom and then lifted the glass. The mouse bounced quickly away towards a Tempurpedic as our dogs watched in disgust at our wastefulness.
            "Bye, Mouseykins," I said.
            "Bye, Mouseykins," Darby repeated.

            Last fall I developed for the first time ever a bout of insomnia. It was terrible. I would go to bed and fall asleep normally. Then I would wake up at two, almost on the button, and lay there until four or five. On the worst night I never did fall asleep again, finally dragging my lukewarm corpse to the shower to get ready to teach America's Youth how to use Photoshop.
            I am still not sure what caused the insomnia. No one ever is. I did a bit of research and even found a NYTimes blog about sleep, but all conclusions, scientific or otherwise, are always met with an outpouring of sleep-deprived anger in the comments section. I tried exercise, eliminating afternoon caffeine, staying up a little later, but there didn't seem to be a pattern. It just happened a few times a week. I would very suddenly be laying in bed awake. And this was no ordinary awake. I was wide awake, vastly gapingly awake. All my senses were frighteningly acute. The light from my tiny digital alarm clock would cast a bright green glow across the entire room, so bright I could see it through my eyelids. My heart would be pounding and my thoughts racing as though I woke midstream. And the music. I would have these songs—vile, merciless songs like Walk Like An Egyptian—playing on a cocaine-fueled loop. I'd wake up with the song already in my head, meaning I was actually dreaming the song. Even if I liked the song, like when it was the same few notes of a nifty Destroyer guitar lick, I didn't like it hundreds of times in a row, and I didn't like it in the middle of the night, and I definitely didn't like it at the volume my mind was playing it. It was so intensely loud. It was like living below an apartment of teenagers. It was like living below a past incarnation of me.
            Needless to say I was becoming unsteady. I could see how insomnia might very easily drive a person to suicide. It got to the point where I was afraid to go to bed.
            I am glad to say that it suddenly stopped and I am back to sleeping 14 hours a day. But the sleeplessness also happened to coincide with another mouse infestation. I was disappointed that my kindness towards the previous one was not repaid with some kind of citywide ban on our apartment. And this new mouse was particularly destructive, wrecking the lid to a nice Pyrex casserole dish we were using to store a worthy treasure, uncooked pasta.
            This mouse was also bolder that the last. I caught him rummaging through our cereals or scuttling across the floor in full daylight. Perhaps our soft reputations had gotten round.
            One night I woke with the same inaudible bang of my autonomic nervous system I always did, nerves blazing, music blaring, pupils dilated. Only this time, over the din of Take On Me, I heard something else. After a few seconds I was certain I could detect the sound of a small animal wading through a bag of cat kibble, like a child in a ball pit. Since the cat was next to me either asleep or feigning sleep, the lazy cuss, I knew what I had to do.
            I slipped into the kitchen and armed myself with my trusty bowl. Positioning myself within range I flicked on the light. All movement stopped as my furry foe realized he'd been discovered. After a beat I reached for the bag of food only to see him dart out from the hole he'd chewed into the back of it.
            The chase was on. Across the countertop he weaved into and behind our stuff—pots, dirty dishes, the composting jar—as I removed them and provoked him to flee further. Then, in a remarkable redux of the last incident, my mark made his way under that impregnable fortress, our toaster.
            This time I swept it quickly to the side before the mouse could find his way into the alcoved feet. He attempted to climb the adjacent brick wall too, but having seen it all before, an old hand at this mousing business, I swatted him back down with the easy grace of a trained fighter. Cornered, he took a look at me and decided to go for broke. He charged me and jumped from the counter, free-falling several feet (the human equivalent of jumping several stories) to the floor where I slammed the bowl down on top of him. CLOP!
            I gasped as I noticed I'd accidentally put the bowl's edge down on his tail and swiftly repositioned it. But I'd gotten him! I am kind of a genius at this.
            As I knelt there congratulating myself at three in the morning on the kitchen floor I sensed a distinct lack of movement. Nervous that this was an escape ploy, playing possum, the old Faint 'n' Flee, I pressed my ear to the floor and slowly raised the bowl's edge, hoping he wouldn't lunge at my face.
            The mouse was on his side, lifeless.
            After removing the bowl completely to confirm it, hesitating to watch for any flicker or contraction, I could see what I had done. Whether it was the fall or the rim of the bowl or a heart attack is not clear. I did know I was starting to rack up a body count.
            Heartbroken I picked him up by the tail and placed him in the trashcan.
            As I crawled back in bed, Darby, who'd been woken up by the Keystone Cops in her kitchen asked me, "Did you get him?"
            I burst into tears. "I'm so tired!" I whimpered. "I accidentally killed him. And I just want to go to sleep."
            She sighed and told me it was okay, but I felt wicked, like a big dangerous animal that can kill without trying, like an Orca or Mike Tyson. I fell asleep curled across her lap, deeply ashamed.

            Which brings us to today. I remember remarking that we'd had little trouble from the mice this winter. Darby had buttressed her initial border fencing with yet more screen, and we'd moved more or less anything that wasn't sealed in glass to the refrigerator.
            With not much to eat we hoped it wouldn't be worth the effort and the mice would stay away. I keep hoping mice use a system of communication, like hobos (or is it hoboes?), leaving markers at the entryway to tell the others Cat, or Bare Cupboard, or Insomniac Butcher, but I guess not. A recent cold snap was followed by a fresh wave of droppings. Lots of them. And, perhaps driven by necessity, the mice managed to scale new heights. We found turds on top of the fridge, in the stove burners, and quite impressively one of them managed to climb onto our wire mesh pot rack and burrow a crater into a loaf of bread.
            At wit's end my pregnant wife decided she was ready to go lethal.

            At the hardware store, faced with so many varieties of traps, my resolve begins to waiver. Like a dictator invading a small, impoverished country, the mice are badly outgunned. We pick up boxes comparing the various contraptions, weighing price against deadliness. We also want it to be fairly painless, if a horrific death in which you are crushed can ever be painless. But there is just no getting around it. All these traps are going to kill one way or the other, and the packaging is no help. As with any other competitive market, each brand of trap trumpets its own greatness. Testimonials floated in electrified word bubbles exclaim, “Eradicates Mice!” or “Guaranteed to Kill!!” I keep looking for the trap that induces a coma and then smothers them with pillows. Where are the adjectives that provide reassurance—words such as restful and compassionate and ticklish? They don’t exist because wimps like me don’t kill mice; they do yoga and see therapists and rearrange their lives to suit this unique and character-building challenge. I am crossing a threshold here, one in which I cannot bring with me my feelings about the value of life. I am entering a warzone where it’s us or them, and death to the enemy is the only goal.
            A box of poison has a cartoon mouse in silhouette assuming the croaked position, eyes exed out thanks to its trusting nature. The trap packaging is more aseptic. They feature pictures or drawings of mice to remind you of just what you're up against, but none of the companies are so macabre as to depict an actual casualty. I suppose an image of a rodent in rigor mortis after it's had its vertebrae snapped by blunt force trauma doesn't put people in a buying mood.
            For the faint of heart there are even traps that do their dirty deeds out of view, enticing the mouse to enter an enclosure, not unlike our badly misnamed No Kill tube, and smashing them in private. I imagine a croquet mallet coming down on their skull as they perch in the dark enjoying a free snack. One of these PG-13 traps is disc-shaped and promises a kill every time, as though mice are actually very durable. I can't tell from the package but I surmise the trap somehow employs rotational force—perhaps after the mouse has poked its head though a hole like those photo backdrops where your face is superimposed over a bodybuilder's built body—so some of the mouse gets twirled while other parts stay put.
            The most gruesome trap we see is a mouse-sized area rug made of flypaper. I cannot imagine waking up to find a frightened rodent glued in place, by now probably praying for death. And unless I'm missing something, the actual deathblow must then be supplied by you, the consumer. Maybe some people would enjoy smiting a live mouse. As I believe I have demonstrated, I am not of this ilk. For one thing, what does one use? A shoe? A brick? (Perhaps for a bit of levity the designers could include a tiny shovel.) And so then how do you, post-bludgeon, get the mouse off the trap? Or is it a single use item, because I have to think even a below average mouse would know to avoid walking across the platform that has a dried mouse foot stuck to it?[1]
            Confused and a bit nauseous, we whittle our choices to the smaller, simpler traps. The most cost-effective ones are the iconic, springy ones made of wood, but some clever designer made a clever decision: the switch that activates the trap is a yellow piece of plastic with several holes drilled in it. That way the mouse will think it’s made of cheese. Just imagine their surprise!
            Another slightly more expensive trap is similar in function to the classic traps, but its aesthetics raise questions. The trap is made of white plastic jaws. When activated, a curved row of pointed fangs slams down onto another row of fangs, much like the chomping of teeth. In truth, it looks more like a very small bear trap than anything you’d need for a mouse. No doubt this design was chosen for those who do not worry about the ethics of killing and want a trap that not only kills but also looks like an awesome monster.
            It kind of works on Darby. She says she is worried that the mousetrap classic won’t work and the mice might survive. She says she’s heard they sometimes only catch their tails. I am torn. On the one hand I’m not sure that the plastic will form a tight enough seal; on the other, if it is as powerful as it looks, I do not want to be cleaning up viscera every morning. I opt to reassure her that the wood and wire ones will be fine.
Incidentally, our traps are called Tom Cats and, as you might have guessed, have a picture of a stalking cat on them. We buy four of them, and when we get home I show them to our real cat in an attempt to shame him.
“If you won’t hunt, what are you?” I ask because cats love rhetoric. “You’re just one more animal eating our food. You’re just a big mouse!”
Seconds after setting the first trap, Darby catches a human thumb in it and I feel we’ve chosen wisely. I go about setting the others.
“Do you think we need four?” I ask.
“We don’t have any idea how many mice there are. We might as well set them all.”
For bait, Darby smears a bit of peanut butter on the plastic cheese platforms, and I start to have a morbid reaction. I think of how perverse it is to commit murder with products called Jif and Skippy.
We set traps in a sort of parallelogram about the kitchen’s perimeter: one in the cupboard, one on the stove, one on the fridge, and one by the washing machine. I go to bed feeling certain I’ll be startled awake in the middle of the night by a clean, bright snap.
It doesn’t happen. Not a creature was stirring. I wake up with my alarm, groggy, at quarter to six. In my liminal state I’ve sort of forgotten about the traps, so it comes as a surprise when I pass through the kitchen toward the light switch to find a mouse right there on my stovetop, his head held fast to the trap’s base, still as a stone.
            I don’t know what I expected, but I’m still surprised it worked. It’s like an act of faith: if I put this crude machine down and go to bed, a mouse will appear.
            I’m afraid to touch it. I don’t want it to be alive. I do this anytime I’m confronted by death. I always think I can see the deceased moving, or trying to move, or thinking about moving. In our church growing up it was standard practice to have an open casket wake. It is also a very yucky standard practice to kiss the deceased goodbye as they ascend to Heaven. When my great great aunt died I followed protocol, not because I was worried about her safe passage, but because I wanted to feel if she was cold or not. She was.
I look at his eyes and they don’t seem glazed at all. He looks like he’s watching, waiting to see what I’m going to do. Instead of reaching for him, I do what I always do when I see something tragic and/or out of the ordinary, I get my camera.
As I’m framing up the most appropriate mise-en-scène and checking my shutter speed I am already thinking of a title. I decide to call it One Way In Which I Am a Hypocrite (Self-portrait As Failed Vegetarian). Satisfied that I’ve properly documented and therefore memorialized the event, I slowly lift the trap. Only it’s stuck. Not that I blame him but I think the mouse might have emptied his bladder one last time and the dried urine has stuck him to the oven. With a bit more strength the fur sort of peels free and I hold the trap above the garbage can.
Freeing—and by freeing I mean getting the severely indented rodent to slide off the trap—the mouse is harder than I suspected. I wish I knew the terminology better so I could explain this more fluently, but the part that actually does the smashing (the smasher?) is almost flush with the base. I have the delicate task of trying to work my fingers underneath it to pry it upwards without actually touching the mouse because that is just gross. Once I get it, the mouse continues to hang from the smasher like a grappling hook, even as I pull it away, so badly is the poor mouse’s skeleton notched. With a slight flick of my wrists the mouse’s body swings outward from the trap and finally lets go, unceremoniously dropping into the wastebasket. I feel bad, but also a sense of relief, like this war is finally over.
As I head toward the bathroom to get in the shower I hear a jingle coming from the laundry room. I am shocked to think that maybe another mouse just triggered the trap in there, right before my ears. Flipping the light switch, I hear another jingle, and suddenly I see the trap, upside-down, tracing along the bottom edge of the washing machine.
I gasp as I realize the mouse, far from dead, has his back leg caught. I reach down to pick up the mouse/trap but as I do he lunges for my fingers. My fears have come true, just as Darby warned, and now I am faced with what to do with a mouse I have trapped, and certainly injured, but not killed. I grasp the trap gingerly with thumb and forefinger so no teeth can reach me and head outside, the mouse squeaking the whole way.
Up close I can see his hind leg is caught at an awkward angle. It’s purple and swollen and he curls back in on himself to try to work it free but his tiny arms are far outmatched by the strength of the spring coil.
On the sidewalk I’m only wearing slippers, but there are plenty of rocks. I have no idea what to do. Turning him loose crippled seems worse than just ending it now. I steady myself and put the mouse-in-the-machine on the cold cement, pinning him in place with my toe as I select an appropriate murder weapon from our xeriscaping.
Buoyed by terra firma, the mouse makes a run for it and frees himself from my clog’s grasp, the trap scraping slowly behind him.
Trying to pin him back in place is harder than it sounds. It requires enough quickness and aim to get a good toehold on the far end of the trap, but not so much force that I’ll just flatten him, which is weird because I’m about to flatten him anyway, but sometimes you have a procedure in your head and it’s hard to improvise if steps are skipped, even when the results will be the same. At last I get him to stick, but I’m starting to reconsider his clemency. If he can move okay on three legs and one trap, he’ll probably be all right. Then again I’m going to be mad if I wake up tomorrow and I find him a second time.
I decide to let him sort it out and I lift the trap off his leg. He scurries off into the shadows of a rosemary bush.
As I pass through the kitchen on the way to the shower I realize I’d better check the other two traps.
Inside the cupboard I see this is turning into a massacre. The third casualty of the morning lays lifeless underneath the trap, his tail snaking out like, well, a snake. I exhale and turn to see the fourth trap atop the fridge. Finally, mercifully, this one is empty. It is, however, triggered, and the peanut butter is gone. I hope that the poor bastard on the stove got to enjoy this first helping unscathed before his demise, but there’s no way to say. Since the trap went off, maybe a fourth mouse managed to escape.
Then I realize all the peanut butter, even on the traps in which there was a kill, is gone. Without seeing them in action it’s hard to know how sensitive they are to the mice, but it seems as though they aren’t so sensitive that they’ll shut the moment the mouse sets paw on them. I picture the mice, as the last atoms of oxygen leave their bodies, reaching for and eating the peanut butter and wondering if it was worth it.
In the shower, I’m a bit shaky. Running the stats I realize this could go on and on. Four traps and they’d all been occupied at some point, meaning there could be dozens of others. I start to wonder if we need more and better traps. I mean, they sort of worked, but there was a 50% misfire rate. Plus I’m not sure if the traps are reusable. Obviously they can be reset, but there has to be at least a whiff of death on them. And if there are others, wouldn’t they have seen what happens when you touch those things? Mice are used in science experiments because they have a capacity to learn. Haven’t I spoiled the ending?
At work I receive the following email from Darby:

Hey, How's your day? I saw all the traps and the trash is out. Thanks for taking it out. Did we get one mouse or four?

            I decide that Darby, who is a lot more sensitive than I am about these matters—so much so that she can’t watch the news because there are far too many stories about dog fighting and accidents at the zoo—doesn’t need to hear the details.
            My response focuses on the positive:

            Let’s put it his way, all the peanut butter got eaten.

            That night I dutifully reapply the bait and lay three traps again. I decide to retire the one that was mouseless, fearing another malfunction would result in another maiming. While I sleep I have dreams in which mice are darting across the surfaces of the kitchen. Dozens of traps have dead mice caught in them, but the survivors barely notice as they scramble past and atop the fallen. I keep opening the traps and resetting them only to catch more mice. It’s like those nature shows where the swarms of swirling fish pour along and over one another while the net closes in on them.
All the mice look the same. Like low-ranking enemy drones in video games, they lack defining characteristics and stream forth without end. Killing them never stems the tide; the only way to stop them is to complete the level—in this case, move to a new apartment.
In the morning it is quiet. The traps sit tensed but empty, and I feel grateful. Still it is not clear whether we got them all the previous day or not. Any remaining mice may well have skirted the death machines. The only way to tell will be to start restocking the counters with the dry goods and keeping an eye out for breaches in the packaging, and of course the appearance of poop.
Despite my feelings, it is hard to argue with the results of the traps. But it frightens me to think of the precision and severity of such a technology; how I can do nothing and mice die; how it takes a fraction of a second; how insignificant it makes them seem, broken like a twig beneath that lashing metal tongue; how they probably never saw it coming and probably took their life for granted; how it’s over before you know what hit you; how I am sorry.


[1] A friend, who has experience with this particular trap, informed me that her husband carries the stuck mouse outside, places it mouseside-down on the pavement, and backs over it with the car. He does not reuse the trap.


Special thanks to Gail Miller for editing and extra mousetrap consultation.

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