Beverly Cleary can bite my ass.
Cecily and I recently moved to a new apartment in an old, multi-family home. It’s had many, many occupants, some of whom have treated it better than others.
The owners have been diligent and conscientious in their upkeep, so the wear on the apartment has tended to take the form of character, rather than neglect. There’s lumpy paint, stunningly beautiful hardwood floors, and interesting vestigial remnants of obsolete hardware. A programmable thermostat controls hissing iron radiators next to a china cabinet set into the wall. Storage cupboards have been sealed shut by paint, then pried open, and again painted over, as they are alternately rediscovered and forgotten. The inner doors have scars and wounds that have been bandaged and stitched over many years of student housing.
Better, it has enough space for Cecily to have a full studio, and for me to have a small office and studio space, as well. We like it quite a lot.
Sadly, the mice seem to like it, too.
It’s an old building, with cracks in the foundation and a huge, amazingly creepy basement, so it’s not really all that surprising that winter would bring with it some four-legged, squeaking invaders.
I say, of course, “not all that surprising” in the academic, reflective sense.
It’s a bit different when you come home late at night, flip on the kitchen light, and a dirty-grey mouse runs across your stove and dives into one of the burners.
It’s a hell of a lot different when, moments later, another mouse tries to make a break for home and gets caught in the cuff of your pants.
I’m not certain what your reaction would have been. It certainly would have been better than mine, though, which was to hop absurdly backwards on one foot, and stick the offending leg out, away from me, while the mouse jerked and kicked around my ankle. It would be nice to say that I was trying to shake the mouse free, but to tell the truth, my calf just sort of involuntarily spasmed at the end of my knee, like I was doing the hokey pokey under electrocution.
A whooping noise came out of my throat that I can’t properly reproduce, let alone transcribe. It went something like “hwooooooaaaaaowww!” but a lot more high-pitched and girly sounding. And I think it turned into a squawk somewhere towards the end.
My spasm must have either dislodged the mouse, or perhaps made it embarrassed to be seen with me, because it flew partway across the room, went into a four-paw drift, bounced off the corner of the pantry door, and vanished into one of the million small cracks in the kitchen’s ancient woodwork. Leaving me, standing in the kitchen, with pinpricks of adrenaline crawling mouse feet up my legs and spine.
It took a while, before I could get to sleep that night.
The next day, we called the owners and, to their credit, they responded promptly and thoroughly. Bait has been put out. Professionals have been brought in. And a survey is being made of the cracks and holes that allow the mice to get in to the apartment, which should be interesting (if sisyphean). I’m reasonably confident that the whole issue can be managed.
But it’s going to be a long while before I can feel relaxed in the kitchen again, while barefoot.
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