Mousing around

Now that I have moved into my house, I am basically alone. I write “basically alone” because I wouldn’t want to overlook the scorpions, lizards, birds, insects, spiders and mice that live there too. In the past week I have killed a scorpion, heroically battled a mouse (read on for details), and contemplated ways to rid my roof of the 50 birds that nested up there while no one was living inside (I’ve considered throwing a Molotov cocktail up there and setting my roof ablaze; learning their language and diplomatically talking them down from the roof; or creating a 35km trail of breadcrumbs to lead them to the nearest PCVs roof. Suggestions welcome).

There are two newts that live in my bathroom—Jorge and Emilio—I actually kind of like those guys so I hope they stick around for the duration. Then there’s Frank, the perpetually disgruntled iguana who sulks around my front yard. I like to think he’s depressed because he wasn’t born a chameleon (clearly the superior lizard), which I believe also lives in my yard, but you can never be sure.

But for now, I would like focus on the story of one extraordinary animal, one who has thwarted my every attempt to destroy it. Iago is the mouse that lives in the mud walls of my house, and he is one tough, self-destructive sonofabitch. I first met Iago one night a couple weeks ago, when he popped his deceptively cute, grey head through a hole in my living room, ran to the door, and then, once he was sure I saw him, scurried back into the hole. I glanced at the other PCV in the room, who shared my “he’s cute but he’s gotta go” look on her face, which was enough for me to go to the kitchen to grab an old, copper mousetrap left over from the last PCV.

Snapping my own very un-mouse-like fingers numerous times, I rigged the antique trap as best I could, placed it at the same hole from which Iago had made his grand entrance, and resumed watching reruns of Boston Legal.

Fifteen minutes later, Iago appeared, gave the trap a once-over and then looked at me as if I had offended him with this meager attempt at mousicide. “Hey rookie—you think this old piece of junk is gonna take me out? If you’re gonna get me you better damn well finish the job. You could really hurt a guy with a thing like this!” I watched in amazement as he stepped defiantly onto the mousetrap and placed his paws on the trigger, pulling on it madly, wildly, suicidally—if Iago was going to die it was going to be because he wanted to die, not because some clumsy giant had set a shoddy trap indiscreetly next to the most obvious hole in the wall. The trap didn’t spring. “Of course it didn’t spring, you fool,” glared Iago. “Let me know when you’ve got a trap that works.” To drive his point home, he hopped confidently onto the trigger and past the mousetrap, went for a quick jog around the main room and the kitchen and returned the way he came, muttering something that sounded anti-Semitic before returning to his hole.

I examined the trap. It snapped on my finger.

So I set it again, careful to make the trap as sensitive as possible, and placed it where a mouse as condescending as Iago would expect it least—in the exact same spot. I turned the light off and went to get ready for bed.

SNAP!

I ran back to the living room thinking “Mwahaha he’s mine!,” flicked the lights on and there was Iago, unmoving and lifeless, with a copper bar around his furry, grey neck. No more condescension, no more provocation—Iago was no more. My reality TV version of Tom and Jerry ended abruptly, 10 minutes into the first episode. What have I done? Is this what I wanted? All the excitement was gone; the thrill of the chase, ended. Minutes after meeting my furry little roommate, I was left with only a dead mouse, and a guilty conscience.

I reached for the dustpan, dragged my feet over to the corpse and bent down to scoop him up. I didn’t know what I would do once I had Iago in my dustpan, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I was an undertaker on his first day on the job. My right hand, clutching the dust broom, inched nervously towards Iago’s body, and when it was close enough that any live mouse would have felt it and jumped, Iago felt it and jumped. HOLY CRAP HE’S ALIVE! That rat BASTARD!

The trap was still around his neck and it was holding him to the ground, like a necklace with a real grand piano as the pendant. Again, I inched towards Iago, thinking maybe this was just like a decapitated chicken, and maybe mice have a few jolts left in them before they go into the next world, which I imagine resembles the land from the Redwall series. This time Iago’s jolt was more successful. Summoning the force of ten thousand mice (conversion: force of ten thousand mice = force of my left pinky) he cast the vice-like death necklace off of his body, hopped into the air, started running in-place on the way back down until his feet picked up enough friction to move away from the site of his brief imprisonment and got the f!@# out of there, again mumbling something that sounded anti-Semitic.

Needless to say, I was pretty stunned. Sure, my reality TV Tom and Jerry was back on the air but I was no longer sure I wanted to be on it. I was pretty entertained by reruns of Boston Legal; moreover, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do battle with an immortal mouse, as epic as that sounds. I have since seen the mouse scurry across my floor a handful of times, and it once scampered over a fellow PCV while she was sleeping in my living room. On a related note (Iago, I hope you are reading this), I have also purchased some heavy duty mouse glue, which I have been instructed to apply to cardboard sprinkled with tomatoes, bread crumbs and other temptations, and once I have successfully immobilized the mouse, I am told “the glue is highly flammable.” While Iago may be quite a nuisance, I’m not sure burning alive is the appropriate sentence for the crime. But I’m not ruling anything out.

Llay 3awn, especially if you’re a mouse,

M’barek