A Closer View From The Crow’s Nest: Tales From My Apartment>Act Two-Please Do Not Feed The Animals!

As a lot of you already know who read my journal, between February & April of this year, I had a major rodent invasion. I killed 17 mice in all & used every method know possible, including standard & glue mousetraps, baited with cheese, nuts and peanut butter, peanut butter laced with Pine Sol floor cleaner, Coca-Cola, multi-grain De-con bars & even plug-in sonar sound-wave devices that only mice can hear & drive them to suicide.

Interestingly enough, the Coca-Cola when sipped by a rodent is supposed to give them gas & also makes them unable to belch. If on the other hand they do belch, they die fast.

Because of the rodent problem, I lost several friends, but not because I lived in the apartment, more because I was a murderer of innocent and harmless creatures.

My co-worker Winina, an animal lover at best, got so mad about it and even called me to tell me that she rarely gets mad over anything, but this time I had gone too far. Too far? Would it have been a whole lot better if I had let them run amok in & around my apartment & destroy it completely?

Then she suggested that if I wanted to get rid of them all I had to do was catch them one by one, grab them by the tail, take them outside & set them free! What lunacy! Did she actually think I had real time to sit there and wait for each mouse to appear and tell them, “Hey, I’m gonna help you escape and give you the freedom you deserve. Let me show you the way!”

Then she suggested glue-traps, a lesser form of cruelty. Well, no sooner did I do that, when I realized that these mice were cruel to themselves. They chewed upon their legs and tails to find their way out of their sticky predicament. No, standard mousetraps are the way to go, it's a more humane way of killing them; it’s quick, fast & painless.

In fact my friend Zog’s younger son Zig suggested I try setting up four standard mousetraps in a cross-shape, just to catch one mouse. Amazingly, it worked! Then of course, there was dearly departed Evelyn who couldn’t be bothered with such things. The great animal husbander had no feelings or understanding of the situation whatsoever. Her best friend Eva even conveyed to me that she wished more mice invade my apartment! Karma swings hard to those who wish evil onto others. At times that swing works faster than a voodoo doll.

But back to the matter at hand; how in the word did they pick my apartment to begin with? As it turns out, my building manager told me one lone mouse had invaded the building one year earlier, but was quickly caught. Still, something had to be attracting them. It turns out a couple of the residential neighbors across the alley from me have been feeding the wild animals (rabbits, squirrels, etc) for several months.

In the past, inside one particular backyard, I have been privy to witness loaves of Italian & French bread strewn across the grass and this past Monday, freshly cooked pasta! Now of course if you keep feeding wild animals, all kinds of critters will show up, including mice, which in earnest do hunt for good food sources and a decent place to live & reproduce in the latter half of the year. Mice are quite clever, in that, they lay a urine trail to find their way back to the food source.

During my nearly two-month ordeal, I found several unplugged holes in and around the apartment that had never been sealed up. that might have been one way they came in. another way, might have been all of the sealed boxes i had yet not put in storage that contained dry foodstuffs. I'll still never know why they picked my apartment out of all the units to nest in.

I spent oodles of hours, time & money to find ways of killing them and thankfully it worked. The positive reinforcement I received by this experience was that I now know what to do when I have mouse trouble. The negative part is I have to constantly watch for their return, especially this coming winter.

I can hardly wait.