How cute is this?
Faith is believing in something when you haven't seen it. Trust is believing in something when someone else has seen it*. I have faith and I trust that there is a mouse in our kitchen. Having dealt with rodents (and often being the cause of their demise) in my scientific career, I don't mind so much, but roommate Doree has taken every measure in the book to make sure this mouse never sees the light of another day. Doree hates the mouse.
We've set traps. The humane traps were baited with my generic peanut butter that is apparently below the refined palate of the average house mouse. The mouse has outsmarted the sticky traps. The traps move, the traps have little mouse footprints in them, but they have no mice attached. Doree read something somewhere that said that mice hate the scent of peppermint, and now our kitchen smells like the seven levels of the candy cane forest**, but we can still hear the little bugger skittering behind the pantry.
The current score is Mouse-3, Doree-0. The poor dear is too afraid to leave her room in the middle of the night for fear that she'll step on it on the way to the bathroom and contract and die of some horrible mouse disease. Of course, the mouse is just going to be sitting there, even aiming for itself to be right underfoot. The same somewhere that provided the peppermint information (i.e. the Internet) informed her that mice have poor eyesight and horrible reflexes.
Roommate Lindsay has a theory that this mouse is magic, even Santa Claus. We cannot kill this mouse, she says, or millions of Christian children will be heartbroken.
I frankly don't mind the mouse. I've always wanted a pet, and I feel like it contributes to the charm of our old house... as long as it doesn't start eating my food or chewing on any electrical wires or climbing into my laundry bin... on second thought, we need to get this thing out of there.
*And super trust is when you know something exists because roommate Doree starts screaming bloody murder at 11:00 at night because it's climbing on her crackers.
**Also, I don't recommend soaking cotton balls in 37% alcohol and throwing them behind the stove.
You'll care about getting rid of the mouse eventually. I had a mouse in my apartment about a year ago. Managed to scurry away every time I would approach the kitchen. I thought it wasn't a big deal at first. It officially became an untenable situation when I nearly caught the mouse - in my bread bag! I hesitated in crushing it, so it was able to slip out and run away. The bread immediately went in the trash. Luckily rat traps seemed to kill it (it takes "food" back to the nest, ect, ect) Haven't seen hide nor hair of the little bugger since. (My bread, though, now sits on a counter not mouse-accessible)
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