Yesterday Becca effectively grounded our Space Travel discussion when she astutely pointed out that:
“Dyson sphere” rhymes with “mice in here” which is the sign that should be on our front door.
I want no such sign posted, but I’m starting to suspect that the rodential tenants in this apartment outnumber the tenants who have a serious problem with this arrangement.
You may recall that this is not the first mouse incident we’ve had here. There was the mouse we accidentally caught in January, and the mouse that ate my granola bars in May. Then a few weeks ago I saw a mouse climbing my bookshelf. Maybe it’s reading my cookbooks, but if I’m going to have a “little chef” as a roommate, it’ll have to be Aaron Brown.
Following that, I plugged up some wall gaps my closet with this foam thing which was effective for a short time, until I woke up to the sound of a mouse (ok I’m just going to say mice now because really…). I thought, “wow, I can hear it through the walls,” but no, it turns out they chewed through the hardened foam and were back in business.
If the story stopped there, it would be a non-story. I started seeing the mouse in the kitchen. I got some traps. Menos eficaz. Becca scrubbed the floors cleaner than when we moved in. Next morning they had eaten food from the top shelf of the baker’s rack. We also saw some evidence of some different entry paths, including crumbled plaster/ sheet rock around a pipe floor gap. Sunday night, Becca emailed Seth:
Today Amy saw the mouse run down out of the kitchen and down the hallway. After scouting out the hallway and seeing that all the doors were closed, we came to the conclusion that the mouse must have slipped underneath some door. The gap between the front door and the floor is actually the biggest one so we deduced that most reasonably the mouse had left the apartment. Later Amy was laying on the couch because she was planning on sleeping out there on account of her growing fear that the mouse is in her room. As I was talking to her, I saw a mouse pop up over the back of the couch and peek its head over the back of it. So, it’s still in our apartment and at large.
Following the email, she saw a mouse in the bathroom go through a pipe gap to inner wall frontier. Monday night, Seth and Marcus helped us set up 10 more traps. The result? Fur in one of the glue traps and this the next morning:

As they get more aggressive, I feel more violated. They are creating holes in our apartment where there were no holes. They’re busting through our walls like disease-laden koolaid men–without the free beverages or cuteness. This morning I couldn’t find my wallet and my first thought was that the mice took it to use my credit card. Clearly I’m going crazy, but I’d say I’m the victim here.