Dance Like a Monkey
Woke up the other morning last weekend in a haze and was making breakfast for my daughter when I thought I saw something dart out from behind the garbage can. Considering that my eyes were barely open, I wrote it off as some sort of optical illusion, a trick of my mind. But, just in case, I looked around the corner of the stove--the direction that whatever it was went--and saw a tail hanging out from behind the back of the oven...
I've lived with roaches and mice before, though not in our current apartment and not with kids. So, I'm a little freaked out, but figure that the mouse must have come in under the service door in our kitchen and was headed out that way (the apartment below us is being renovated and there is other construction throughout the building, and that always stirs up the critters). As I'm pouring my cereal, I see the mouse dash out past the garbage can (my reaction is to jump about a foot in the air, sending raisin bran everywhere) and head for the living room. I assume that it ran under the radiator (where there must be a hole in the floor), but when I grab a flashlight and sweep the light under there I see nothing. I don't mention this to my wife.
While she's out, I take the radiator cover off, find a hole large enough for a mouse next to the radiator pipe that goes into the floor, and plug up the gap with some spackle. My daughter asks me what's going on and I tell her, and she's not phased by this in the least. She knows that mice poop everywhere and belong in cages if they're inside, so she thinks this is a good idea.
I also decide to check the under the radiator cover in the kids room--and find a gi-normous hole in the wood floor, as well as a few mouse poops. Damn! I drag the kids out to the grocery store for steel wool and mouse traps, and then stuff the Brillo into the hole, seal it up, and set out the traps (the nasty glue kind--I know, they're horrible and less humane than the snappy ones, but I hate setting them).
In the our first post-college apartment that we shared with two other friends--a crappy railroad on the top floor of a nasty tenement--we were away for the weekend and came back to learn that our roomies had caught something like 13 mice (!) while we were gone. The landlord had begun fixing up the apartment beneath us and those suckers came pouring out of the walls. Once the renovations were done, things weren't too bad (we also patched up every hole we could find), but we all bailed out of that apartment when the lease was up. After that, anytime we moved somewhere new, I plugged up any holes under sinks, etc., and pretty much never had any problems with bugs or mice (apart from the odd waterbug that would wander in under the front door during summer heat waves). Yes, the bugs and vermin are still in the walls and always will be with us, but this way they have their space and we have ours.
Knock on wood, I haven't seen any evidence that the mice have visited us again (and nothing has turned up in the traps). And I told my wife about the sighting and finding the holes after I fixed the problem. It minimized the freakout (if you gotta deliver bad news, at least tell someone about it after you've taken action to make things better). My wife, though, is the real pest control master...she actually stepped on and killed a mouse (by accident) at our friend's house earlier in the week!
* * * *
"Dance Like a Monkey" is from the latest New York Dolls record, "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This."
I've lived with roaches and mice before, though not in our current apartment and not with kids. So, I'm a little freaked out, but figure that the mouse must have come in under the service door in our kitchen and was headed out that way (the apartment below us is being renovated and there is other construction throughout the building, and that always stirs up the critters). As I'm pouring my cereal, I see the mouse dash out past the garbage can (my reaction is to jump about a foot in the air, sending raisin bran everywhere) and head for the living room. I assume that it ran under the radiator (where there must be a hole in the floor), but when I grab a flashlight and sweep the light under there I see nothing. I don't mention this to my wife.
While she's out, I take the radiator cover off, find a hole large enough for a mouse next to the radiator pipe that goes into the floor, and plug up the gap with some spackle. My daughter asks me what's going on and I tell her, and she's not phased by this in the least. She knows that mice poop everywhere and belong in cages if they're inside, so she thinks this is a good idea.
I also decide to check the under the radiator cover in the kids room--and find a gi-normous hole in the wood floor, as well as a few mouse poops. Damn! I drag the kids out to the grocery store for steel wool and mouse traps, and then stuff the Brillo into the hole, seal it up, and set out the traps (the nasty glue kind--I know, they're horrible and less humane than the snappy ones, but I hate setting them).
In the our first post-college apartment that we shared with two other friends--a crappy railroad on the top floor of a nasty tenement--we were away for the weekend and came back to learn that our roomies had caught something like 13 mice (!) while we were gone. The landlord had begun fixing up the apartment beneath us and those suckers came pouring out of the walls. Once the renovations were done, things weren't too bad (we also patched up every hole we could find), but we all bailed out of that apartment when the lease was up. After that, anytime we moved somewhere new, I plugged up any holes under sinks, etc., and pretty much never had any problems with bugs or mice (apart from the odd waterbug that would wander in under the front door during summer heat waves). Yes, the bugs and vermin are still in the walls and always will be with us, but this way they have their space and we have ours.
Knock on wood, I haven't seen any evidence that the mice have visited us again (and nothing has turned up in the traps). And I told my wife about the sighting and finding the holes after I fixed the problem. It minimized the freakout (if you gotta deliver bad news, at least tell someone about it after you've taken action to make things better). My wife, though, is the real pest control master...she actually stepped on and killed a mouse (by accident) at our friend's house earlier in the week!
* * * *
"Dance Like a Monkey" is from the latest New York Dolls record, "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This."
posted by Steve from Moon | 10:28 PM
1 Comments:
Knock on wood, haven't seen any mice since. I rule.
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