Meece

Yesterday was my monthly turn at the cleaning rota, and I usually tend to do OCD things like wipe under the microwave, move the 57 bottles of olive oil so I can wipe under them, attempt to clean the George Foreman grill that no one uses yet is inexplicably dirty, etc. I sometimes find interesting things like rubber bands, crumbs, and one time, an olive. However, yesterday, I got an unwanted surprise when I discovered...mouse droppings. A lot of them. We have had mice in the garden and the garage since Summer but I had never seen any evidence of them in the main house. Ew, ew, ew. I grabbed the bleach and went to town, then planned to send an email out to my housemates regarding our new pets.

After 2.5 hours of cleaning (most of it in the kitchen), I went to take a nap and was awoken by a loud crash. No one was crying or yelling, so I figured I would let it be and went back to sleep. Adam came over a little while later and we went to the kitchen for a quick snack before heading out for the evening. We encountered one of my housemates making her own snack, and she mentioned that she and another housemate saw two mice earlier (meece :-), which was what resulted in the crash. Gah. She also said she had found a hole in the wall in the hallway where she thought the mice had come in. She had put a lot of duct tape over the hole, so we hoped the problem would be solved for the time being.

Everyone was chatting merrily over our food when out the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny grey thing scurrying down the hall towards the bathroom. My initial instinct was to scream, loud, which prompted Adam into action and he scuttled after it with one of Ly's shoes. I had just mopped and I REALLY wasn't in the mood for a massacre, so I screamed some more while he played whack-a-mouse to no avail. It was looking for the hole we had taped over and when it couldn't get through, it came BACK down the hall towards the kitchen. And towards me. I hollered again and hopped up onto a kitchen chair as Adam and the mouse chased each other down the hall. My housemate, who had been cooking, was quiet but also up on a chair, watching with interest to see how the situation would unfold.

By this point, our other three housemates had come down to see why I was screaming (no need to send that email any more). We discussed possible ways to get rid of the critters:

- Open the door and let them run outside (quickly dismissed, as Adam mentioned these are not like pet cats and probably more would come in while the door was open)

- Feed them poison bait (still under consideration, although we don't want dead ones in the garage or the walls)

- Get glue traps (dismissed as inhumane, since this doesn't kill them quickly)

- Get snappy traps (still under consideration, but no one wants to clean up the carcasses especially since their heads tend to snap off in these things)

We decided to contact the landlord and everyone went their separate ways for the night.

Fast forward twenty four hours and I'm in the kitchen again with Adam and a different flatmate and I went to use the downstairs bathroom before we started roasting our leg of lamb (£6.99 y'all). I was facing the sink when suddenly, a tiny grey creature rushed at me. Talk about an invasion of privacy, hello mouse! Not in the loo! I screamed bloody murder and we danced around the tiny bathroom, then the dumb thing finally ran behind the toilet. I came out of the bathroom to a chorus of "shut the door!". Adam then went in with one of Ly's finance magazines and shut the door behind him to avoid further infestation.

There was a lot of scuffling and Ads emerged five minutes later, only to announce that there are holes where the woodwork is unfinished:

- Behind the sink (big one)

- By the radiator (two small ones)

- Behind the toilet (medium size one)

He then rummaged around the garage, found...something, and used it to plug one of the holes.

I'm not a fan of these encounters with nature. I know we live in the city but come on. I've given five people near heart attacks with my screaming and Adam said his ears are still ringing. My own heart is pounding and I find myself looking suspiciously at the refrigerator and the bathroom now. I bet no one goes in there for a while!

Anyway, hopefully the landlord will sort this out quickly, especially since I've decided to stay here for the time being and not go spend 75% of my income to live in a shoebox. :-)