(Or how fifi got caught between the two)
As you may recall, I was in DC last week. Saturday morning, the boyfriend started blowing me up with texts re: his conviction that a mouse (or mice) had taken up residence in his apartment. I’m not sure what gave him this idea in the first place, but the result was the Oreo trap. Apparently, before going out Friday night he took half an Oreo and placed it in the center of the kitchen counter and when he woke up Saturday morning, the cookie had been moved across the counter and had been nibbled.
Knowing that the boyfriend had done some serious drinking with his friends Friday night, I did question whether the culprit was really a mouse or if it was the drunk boyfriend, but he remained convinced and insisted that we needed to deal with this immediately. And that is where things started to go downhill, as they often seem to do between the boyfriend and me these days.
Now I understand that not dealing with the mouse/mice was not an option because said mouse/mice were not just going to move out on their own and, if allowed to remain, would like bring more of their mouse buddies to hang out. I also understand that having mice is not particularly sanitary, that mice can spread disease, and I would prefer not to feel like our food sources are under seige. So I get all that. I’m not trying to make them my pets (even though they don’t seem to be the big aggressive whatre-yous-talkin-about NYC mice I had been warned about, but more on that later).
After the boyfriend refused to go adopt a cat (Hello? Problem solved), I told him that I wanted to get humane traps, the ones where the mouse goes in, generally lured by some delicious peanut butter, and a door slams down behind him and he hangs out until you go set him free a few miles away (true story- that is how my dad, who is awesome, dealt with the mouse in our basement. And it worked).
The boyfriend refused. He consented on the no glue traps thing, because those are just torture, but I really think that’s more because he is irrationally afraid of mice and rodents in general and coming across a live (and presumably angry) mouse would be more than he could deal with. When he lived in Hell’s Kitchen, he somehow managed to trap a mouse under a bowl or something. He then retreated to the couch and called his sister to come and deal with it (and she did – this should tell you something about their relationship). Anyway, he refused to buy the traps, or even the ones where the mouse runs in, gets zapped, and you don’t have to see it because they work on “the mouse’s natural curiosity” (no it’s the peanut butter) and the boyfriend was not willing to bet on that. So even though I told him I was not comfortable with the oldfashioned snap trap because I think they’re cruel, guess what he came home with. Yup. Awesome.
And, he made it very clear that because of his aforementioned mouse issues, if he did catch something, it would be on me to deal with it. Again, awesome.
He set up the traps with peanut butter and Oreos and labeled the kitchen the “kill zone” (Seriously. He made a sign.) because apparently that made him feel better about the whole thing to make it a joke.
However, it quickly appeared that we had some literate mice, as the traps sat undisturbed until Tuesday. Which, of course, I was fine with. Then, the mice started to outsmart the boyfriend. We woke up Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to the bait in the traps gone and the traps untriggered. This may have amused me.
Thursday morning he left to to South Carolina to golf with a friend of his from law school. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s when the mice got stupid/cocky. I was watching Project Runway, minding my own business when…
SNAP.
Crap. (If you follow me on twitter, you know this is when the meltdown began).
I had come to terms with the traps because I genuinely believed we were never going to catch anything. The boyfriend’s landlord was coming in the morning to look for holes and plug any he found and I thought that would be the end of it. And I did think I was going to be able to deal with it(I have disposed of many gifts of moles from the cats over the years), but when I rounded the corner and saw the poor little gray lump on the trap (on the counter no less), I just couldn’t.
I was so mad at the boyfriend for putting me in the situation. And even more so when he laughed and was like: “Pretend I’m C (black cat) and I brought you a present.” (This may have been when I told him that I f-ing hated him. No judgment).
Long story short, I was attempting to man up (and figure out what I could use to knock the trap into a bag from preferably an arm’s length away) when the boyfriend called and told me that his friend who lives a block away was willing to come deal with the trap and the mouse. I do generally try not to be so over the top girly, but it was late and I was tired and emotional and so I took him up on the offer. And, really, it was much easier this way. I would have made a big production of it, whereas Shawn just picked the trap up WITH HIS BARE HAND and threw it in the trash. Clearly some people are just more constitutionally cut out for dealing with these things than others.
The landlord did come Friday and plugged the holes so hopefully we can put all this behind us now. Otherwise, the boyfriend might just come home to a cat.
Fifi Finishes Law School 