Four weeks ago, I moved to New York with 600 dollars, no job, four suitcases and a feeling of invincibility. After a year and a half of neither steady employment nor love, I came here intending to conquer both and build a new home for myself. The best laid plans nearly went awry this week due to an epic battle with rodents.
I suppose I never really knew how scared of mice I was until this week. The dozen panic attacks I had are proof of some primal fear that was buried inside me. It was similar to the feeling that washed over me on that terrible ferris wheel ride at the Puyallup Fair several years ago. My discovery: I'm afraid of heights. Who knew?
This feeling was same-same but different. Like the difference between picking apples in an orchard and picking blackberries in a briar patch. One was definitely more prickly and challenging.
The struggle started Saturday afternoon when I was cleaning out years of accumulated food and dirt from under the kitchen sink and side cabinets. C had given me free reign to do whatever I wanted to the apartment to make me feel at home. This amounted to me cleaning every nook and cranny feverishly and establishing an order to things. I adore this kind of nesting. It's like marking your territory, Martha Stewart-style. Stacks of plastic containers organized in categories....mmmmm, categories.
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a gray flash near the fridge. I stopped to contemplate what it might be and dismissed the horrid thought.
Later, as I laid in bed that night, I heard little tiny skritchy noises in the kitchen. A dull feeling of dread started forming in the pit of my stomach. No, it can't be.
But why not? I live in the city and it's a fact that people live with mice everyday. Didn't I just read an article when I was in Paris contemplating this move, that NYC's rodent problem is getting worse than ever?
The next day, the stupid thing got brazen and wandered into the kitchen. It was a tiny baby but I was terrified nonetheless. C's geriatric cat sniffed in his general direction and proceeded to amble to his bed for a nap. I guess he's retired.
C came home to rescue me and set up glue traps. We left the apartment to grab dinner and by the time we returned, the baby was stuck to trap and squealing. It was terrible, but I felt relieved. Little did I know, things were about to get so much worse.
The next day I was on the computer and saw another mouse in the kitchen. My heart started pounding and my breathing sped up. Another one? This is not possible. Again, C came home to get rid of it. She tried to flush it out and looked behind the stove where she spied a large hole in the wall around where the gas connects to it. It seems this was their entry point.
I finally had to leave my safety zone on the bed and go to the bathroom. There, on the rug, was a tiny brown-gray lump. At first, I thought the old man cat had missed the litter box, but then I saw a face. Poop doesn't have a face.
"Ummm, sweetie? Can you come in here and tell me what this thing is?" The cat paced around it. It seemed he finally nailed one as he was locked up in the bathroom. The mouse probably walked right up to him and he lifted one polydactyl paw and bonked it out. In any case, I felt relieved again.
C took off to purchase supplies to plug up the hole. While I was all tied up with a project in the bedroom, I saw another mouse on the counter. Quel horreur! I started hyperventilating. We are being invaded by mice!
It was clear I was on the edge of sanity. C plugged the hole with steel wool and expanding foam, laid out more glue traps and took me out for dinner. My appetite did not come along for the excursion.
We returned to silence and empty traps. We tried to sleep. Around 1 am, we heard horrible screeching noises from the kitchen. C disposed of this one and just as she walked back into the apartment with a triumphant look on her face, the biggest mouse yet darted out from the bedroom closet right next to me and ran under the sofa. A panic attack of monumental proportions took over and hijacked my personality.
It was clear I could not stay there. C packed me up and sent me to Brooklyn so she could battle the mice alone and make the house clean. I stayed at a friend's house who was out of town and felt exiled. Everyday I received updates about the mice. We called exterminators. She got snap traps. We waited. She saw no mouse. But I knew he was still there.
I returned a couple of days later to meet the exterminators. While I was waiting, I saw him. He darted around the kitchen, mocking me. Fear turned to anger and I grabbed the decorative riding crop from the wall to chase him. I stood on a step stool in the kitchen and beat the floor, walls and trash can with this crop for over an hour, half hoping to keep him under the fridge and half hoping he would come out so I could beat him. I was at my wit’s end and surely looked insane performing this little act. I talked and sang to him, telling him how he’s not welcome in my new home.
Two exterminator showed up, full of confidence that they could save me. They were nice, but they didn’t do much more than we had already done, save for plugging a couple more holes and providing us with “better”, peanut-butter scented glue traps that would prove useless against our evil genius rodent.
That night, I laid in bed wide-eyed and vigilant. For several hours I listened to every sound and tracked his movements. The bathroom light was on and it cast a long, low shadow over the length of the apartment; just enough light to watch him dart from the kitchen to the closet and then into the bedroom. My stomach boiled with anxiety and I was literally paralyzed with fear when I saw him. He had installed himself in a box of my belongings on the bottom shelf of the desk in the corner of the bedroom, about 8 feet away from me. There he nibbled and gnawed at a plastic bag filled with chocolate from France and hard candy from Italy. At least he had good taste.
I woke C up and calmly said, “There he is, in my box at the desk. He’s in there. I guarantee it.” She dragged herself out of bed and eventually poked the box with a baseball bat. Out leapt the filthy villain! He dashed into my closet in the living room. I started shaking but knew I had to be brave and not run away to Brooklyn again. C and I were exhausted and losing patience with the situation and each other. The vibe was definitely not sunshine, rainbows and unicorns anymore. We were being tested.
After C threw out the bag of candy, we laid back down in frustrated silence. C tried to sleep but I could not. I listened, I looked. The filthy villain returned to bedroom after an hour. I let out a small yelp when I saw him and C woke up, looking like she had the final straw. She grabbed the cat and tossed him in the direction of the mouse hiding behind my box. He was so blasé about the situation and just walked away. “Your cat is broken. This mouse is defeating us.”
Those must have been the magic words because suddenly C busted a move. She grabbed the baseball bat and slammed the end of it into the box that the mouse was hiding behind. I edged up to the far corner of the bed with my knees to my chest and the blanket covering my eyes, totally scared. The mouse came out slowly in a daze and C hit it lightly with the bat. The scene was chaotic. She couldn’t smash the poor thing; it was just too gruesome. The cat came out of retirement for a minute, jumped into the fray and grabbed the mouse with his mouth. Go Jingy, go!
For a few minutes, we laughed and cheered as the comeback cat literally strutted up and down the apartment with that villain in his jaws. He let it go and batted at it and I screamed, “Get it, before it escaped into the walls, regenerates legs and returns to chew our faces off at night!”
She trapped it under a shoebox lid, slid some paper under it, folded the paper up around it and secured it with tape like a present. The mouse which had previously played dead was scrambling around inside and she spun it around to give a little vertigo. That may seem cruel, but after the week of torture, I didn’t think so. It had to go down this way; he was clearly out to get me.
Now, I love to stroke soft things as much as the next guy, but vermin are not included in this equation. Especially ones that jump out at me, poop on my counter, drive me to Brooklyn and eat my sweets from Europe.
This little challenge brought out the best in us. We worked as a team. I tracked, she trapped and bashed and the octogenarian kitty…well, he just bit.
As for the money struggle, that’s simple. I have none. However, new types of employment are being offered to me on a daily basis…