October 5–10, 2002 — Winter coats and mouse droppings

Winter is on its way. Andrew spotted our landlord’s husband hunched over the thermostat in our kitchen, wearing a parka and long johns, muttering about the cold. There can be no better sign of a cooling climate than that.

Also, mice are moving indoors and taking over our house.

We had been hearing mice in our rooms for months, so seeing the occasional mouse darting along the wall in the kitchen was no surprise. We would loudly threaten to kill them whenever they ate one of our chocolate bars, but we managed to keep a mostly friendly relationship with them in spite of everything. Until one moved into our cupboards in the kitchen.

I was making a sandwich for lunch when I first discovered its new home. I opened a drawer to get a washcloth and found the drawer filled with mouse droppings. I pulled the drawer out and put it on the floor. I was going to take it outside to clean it.

Then the mouse that had been sleeping in the drawer woke up.

I tried to take the drawer outside with the mouse in it, but the mouse was having none of that; he jumped from the drawer and scurried behind the fridge before I had a chance to rid the house of him.

I’m not usually squeamish about mice, but there’s something about finding a mouse sleeping in its own droppings in a drawer directly above where I store my food that makes a grilled-cheese sandwich much less appealing. I still decided to try and eat, though, not wanting to let the mouse win in a battle he didn’t even know he was fighting.

Then my landlord decided to come upstairs and visit me in the kitchen. She happily announced that she had known for several days that a mouse was living in our drawer and started to empty it onto the kitchen table, inches from my plate.

Having concluded that my landlord is the kind of person who doesn’t see a problem with dumping mouse shit onto a table while someone else’s lunch is on it, I carried my food into my room and locked the door. My landlord continued her quest to spread animal droppings across the entirety of my kitchen before trying to glue shut holes in the cupboards that she figured the mouse was entering by.

While she did an excellent job of making sure I continued to find tiny specks of feces in surprising places days later, the mouse was back the next week.

My mom called a few days later. I told her what had happened. She muttered something about hantavirus, but concluded that “Toronto’s probably too far north for that to be an issue.” Not one to let something as insignificant as geography discourage a bout of hypochondria, I asked her what hantavirus is.

As it turns out, hantavirus is a pretty terrifying disease carried by mice. The web site where I learned about it also contains such gems as, “If you control rodents but do not control fleas as well, you may increase the risk of infection with bubonic plague, since fleas will leave rodents once the rodents die and will seek out other food sources, including humans.”

My worries at having to throw out most of my food suddenly seemed a lot less significant.

After the mouse returned, we emptied out the drawers so that it had nothing to hide in. It then moved in with our remaining food.

Andrew discovered the mouse’s new home and started emptying out the cupboards, throwing out a lot of food as he went. Then he noticed a scratching noise from inside a box of tea. He opened it up and a mouse was staring back at him through the plastic wrapping.

Andrew carried the box into his room and dumped the mouse and a handful of tea bags into a large jar. We had a new pet. (A pet with more of a bent for escape attempts than most pets seem to have, mind you.)

After a few days, Andrew let the mouse go in the backyard and chased it into a neighbouring lot.

We have seen several mice since then. I am becoming very sick of rodents. We might have to reconstruct our homemade, live-release trap if this keeps up...