ugh! now what?!

So, after my little potato chip incident the other day, I found myself bravely buying a mousetrap at the hardware store. This act alone, you see, is very, very hard for me. It forces me to acknowledge the problem and actually admit that I have....(deep breath)....a mouse.

So I stood in front of the pest control section and saw my options were basically twofold: glue traps or snap-death traps. In the back of my mind, I heard Jen, the "mouse-whisperer" who has resuscitated such creatures in her lab at work, asking me to be humane. To me, that meant not a snap-death trap. But really, it wasn't about humanity at all.

My assessment of the mouse traps went a little something like this:

"Well. So there's glue traps and snap traps. Snap traps scare me. They could totally snap me. And let's face it, probably will. Like when Mikey sits on one by accident in the Goonies, and it hurts a lot but he can't scream or Sloth will hear him. I'm not sure I want a snap trap. But a glue trap? Eek. I think Andrea used those when she had a mouse, and she told me she could hear the mouse squeaking once it was caught. So, there's something to the snap-death where the mouse won't cry, but then I have to deal with a dead mouse. But...I also don't particularly want to deal with a LIVE mouse. Ugh. (urge to vomit.) Which is worse? Dead mouse or live mouse? I mean, my only experience is the time that one of the Andersons' cats killed that mouse while I was housesitting. I sat on the couch for hours until the mouse was captured by the cat. Then I went out to the kitchen with a dustpan and scooped it up, and went outside and chucked it far away into the snow. I was disgusted the whole time. So yeah, maybe I don't want to do that dead mouse thing. Especially because I'm afraid of setting up the trap and losing an appendage. I guess I could get the glue trap, and just make someone else deal with the mouse if I catch one. I'll make Oliver do it. Or the Super. That makes sense. Because one of them is going to have to set the mouse traps up for me anyway. I'm just buying it. That's it."

Then I paid the $1.99 for the pack of 2 glue traps, and went home.

Only later, when I was cleaning out under the kitchen sink and encountered a large amount of mouse poop, did I say "Enough is enough! I can handle this!" and retrieve the box with the traps.

Now, if you think I'm being stupid or girly or cowardly about this, you're right. But you need to understand that underneath all that, the reason for all that, is that I honest to god want to vomit at the thought of handling even an empty mouse trap. It wasn't easy to overcome my dry heaves and put one trap under the kitchen sink and another under the stove. But I did it. And I was proud. And I really didn't think it through.

That was three days ago. I didn't have the guts to open the cabinet to see if a mouse had found his way into the trap under the sink. I assumed I would have heard it, but EVERYTHING I was hearing lately was a mouse in my mind. I refused to throw away any garbage into the trash can under the sink. I refused to obtain cleaning supplies from under the sink. And I realized, somewhat delayed, that merely placing those traps was going to paralyze me from living a normal life in my kitchen.

Then, it happened.

In the wee hours of the morning, I awoke not to one of the 7 million 18-wheelers hauling ass down my street, nor to the scream of sirens of rushed emergency vehicles. No, I awoke to the panicked squeaking of a trapped mouse. And hearing it, identifying it, recognizing it, and acknowledging it turned my stomach inside out. But I was screwed. I was stuck in my bed, unable to put a foot on the floor. And even if I got up, what would I do? I didn't want to see the mouse. I sure as shit wasn't going to touch the mouse. So I resolved to switching on a light (what this achieves I'm not really sure) and putting a pillow over my head so I could get 2 more hours of sleep.

But eventually, I had to get up. And when I did, I put on flip-flops, picked up a flashlight and my pledge grab-it (again, not sure what this accomplishes, but it felt defensive in case of attack). I walked slowly through the kitchen in the dark, guessing, correctly, that it was the under-stove trap that had secured a creature. I could barely make out an image on the trap, and I dared not look closer. Instead, I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door, and took a shower.

When I got out, I ditched the flip-flops but kept the pledge grab-it. By now, the mouse's 4 feet AND tail were all securely affixed to the glue trap, and seeing that long, skinny, fleshy tail made me dry heave again, and I knew I couldn't look at the mouse any more. I got dressed, dried my hair, etc., and ran out the door.

Now I'm at work, and I have to figure out how to deal with the mouse. I guess I should call the Super, and leave a message saying "Yeah, I'm a chickenshit and can't deal. Please let yourself in, pardon the mess, and get rid of the damn mouse!" I really should have thought this through before I laid down the fucking trap!!