Absurd Pop Quiz

Which is worse:

A. Having a mouse in your home
or
B. Having a dead mouse in your home

I vote B.

Yes folks, we have a mouse. And yes, it is as gross as it sounds.

One of the Room Mates saw the thing scurry through our kitchen the night before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day, our guests saw it scurrying into one of the bedrooms. My animal lover friend named the mouse Petey.

Giving it a name didn't help the ick factor at all--it just made it so much harder to think about having to exterminate (yes, kill) it.

The landlord was over a couple of days ago with mouse traps for the kitchen. They look just like the ones in the cartoons, sans the big piece of cartoon cheese. These aren't the humane, trap-the-mouse-so-it-can't-move-and-you-can-release-it-to-the-wild kind of traps. These are the don't-come-here-because-it'll-snap-your-furry-little-head-off kind of traps.

Last night, we caught one. Or rather, the trap caught one. According to the Room Mate, the mouse, Petey, had a furry white underbelly and a grey coat. I didn't go look at all. I was really, really grossed out. In fact, this morning, when I glanced at the trap (that had been tastefully turned over by the Room Mate) out of the corner of my eye, I squealed like a girl. Alright, I am a girl, so I pretty much squealed--like me.

We have mice! According to the landlord, once you catch one, it's a sign that you could have MANY. MANY, as in MORE THAN ONE! There could be Peteys Two, Three and Four running around.

The Room Mate e-mailed over a link today about house mice. I won't gross you all out with the morbid details, but let's just say the article said that mice have a very healthy reproductive cycle. You know the phrase 'breed like rabbits"? Yeah, it's a bit like that. So Petey could have had a Junior. Or worse--Juniors.

You know what's ironic? This is the cleanest living space I've been in. We clean regularly, don't leave food lying around, and yet, rodents. Which goes to show, a little sloth never hurt anyone.

I don't want to think about furry little four-legged creatures hanging around my kitchen, plotting. We got one of its comrades--will the Peteys, like ants, figure out one of their own is missing and come looking for the body? Or will they take it as a sign that the kitchen is a dangerous place, count their losses, and go elsewhere?

In the meantime, I'm making sure all my mousetraps are perpendicular to the walls--as per mouse-trapping regulation. I'm hoping that at the end of the day, the humans will win the battle against the furry four-legged foes, and get their kitchen back.