Urban Pets: Man vs. Mouse

Saturday, July 21, 2007. Not your typical night in the Slacker household.

Roommate2.0* has been sealing off holes, openings of any kind really, in the kitchen, as we lose battle after battle in the war against the mouse. The thing is making us feel like we're in a f----ing cartoon. We patch an entry point, it finds another. We set out trap after trap. It prances right over the them. Arrogant little bastard.

Roommate2.0 thought he'd finally isolated all points of access, when we began to hear noises coming from... the oven. As I type, Roommate2.0 is dismantling the top of the stove, looking for access points beneath the range cover. See, when he turned on the oven, the mouse poked its nose out of an area next to one of the burners, taunting him. It's as if the thing was daring him to turn the gas burners on.

I think it has just become his archenemy.

As grossed out as I am by the thought of Roommate2.0 playing rodent executioner with the weapon of choice being one of our appliances, I am more grossed out seeing that disease-bearing critter in my kitchen. Not basement, not garage. Kitchen. I'm tired of obsessively cleaning and bleaching the counter because the mouse might have scampered across it while we were at work, dragging germs and who knows what else across the surface where we prepare sustenance for our tired, stressed out selves every night.

I'm sure what I've typed here will offend some people. I can live with that. I invite them to come over and catch the darn thing and bring it home to live in their kitchen.


*previous Roommate (Roommate1.0?) bought a condo in Lynn

Urban pets: The raccoon contingent

Picture it, Jamaica Plain, 2007, in a slightly post-gentrification apartment complex. Children are playing, adults sitting on their porches, and three to four raccoons are chowing down on some cat food.

Yes, that's right, raccoons. Big, fat city raccoons indeed. There they were, sating themselves with the cat food that a neighbor leaves out for our cadre of kitties*, unafraid of the nearby parking lot basketball game or cars maneuvering around the asphalt.




*the best fed stray cats in Boston

Urban pets: The city mouse

There is a mouse in my house. And it's a smart one. I think it's the same mouse each time. (At least I prefer to think that there's only one skulking around.)

I know this not because it spoke to me (or spoke at all) but because this determined little rodent has chutzpah. I saw it scamper over one of the mouse traps that make the room an obstacle course for mice and humans alike.

I also think it's a picky little mouse. Most guides to pest elimination (including the boxes to one of the variety of traps) suggest using peanut butter as bait. This mouse clearly has a distaste for peanut butter.

I suppose it's time to get the landlord to bring in a professional to eliminate it.