It's Official; I'm a Murderer

There are several evils that all Manhattanites must perpetually endure: pedestrian traffic at Christmas, improper umbrella usage in the rain, the scenic views of New Jersey, off-off Broadway, the aroma of human feces in the subway.  To a cynic, the list is practically endless.  I'm not trying to say that these issues are entirely unique to New York City, however, if you ask any one of its egomaniacal residents on the street,  you'll be promptly told that our problems are a particularly bountiful promontory.  

The good thing is that after a while, you get totally numb to it.  You barely notice the teenagers breakdancing dangerously close to your forehead on the 6 train, or the homeless man picking a fight with a telephone pole, or the gangs throwing glass bottles at cars.  There’s simple too much crazy here for you to notice it every time and, thankfully, most of the unpleasantries you tolerate happen when you encounter the throngs of assholes outside your door.  Which is why it is all-the-more upsetting when you must face a threat within your very own home.  

That’s right; I’m talking about vermin. 

Mice, cockroaches, bed bugs; you've seen it on the news and there is absolutely nothing you can do to protect yourself. They live in your walls, your sheet, your inner ears.  They consistently rank as the one leveling factor of status in this city.  Irregardless of income or location, any resident of any urban dwelling can stand idly by as their home rapidly becomes a festering cesspool of infestation. 

My story starts a few weeks ago.  

I'd gotten home from work and I was watching Pawn Stars, minding my own business when, all of the sudden, something moving caught my eye.  It was running, so I didn’t get a good look.  I didn’t know what it was. I was startled, but I tried to shrug it off.  I couldn't get it out of my mind.  Whatever it was that just ran past had gone behind the sofa that I was currently sitting on.  I could feel it ready to attack at any moment.  My muscles completely froze.  And then, I saw it come for me. 

I looked down at my foot and there he was.  He was a chubby grey mouse and he was staring up at me with his khaki tail and crablike eyes.  My foot seized and I kicked the coffee table across the room as I screamed to meet my maker.  The mouse disappeared into the abyss under my sofa. I ran into my bedroom and stood on my bed screaming.  That's when a plan was born.  

First, I put on my galoshes for protection.  Then, I grabbed my umbrella with a curved hook arm and ran to the kitchen to find any kind of weapon.  I grabbed the Swiffer and crept slowly back into the living room.  I stood on the far side of the room and used the hook on the umbrella arm to tug at the legs of the sofa, trying to pry it away from the wall.  Having disturbed his hiding place, the mouse came running right at me.  I screamed at the pitch of a rape whistle, threw the Swiffer like a tribal spear.  Mind you, this is the only time it is apropos to stand on your sofa wailing like a banshee while wearing knee-high galoshes.  

   

I saw him make a run for the kitchen.  I followed him, squealing all the while.  I watched as he crushed his body into the size of a pin and folded himself under the oven.  Immediately, I turned on the broiler.  Honestly, I'm not sure what my thinking was here or how this would help.  Maybe I was hoping that he would catch aflame.  Maybe, in my heart of hearts, I was expecting his flaming body to gallop around the kitchen like Speedy Gonzales during the Battle of the Alamo.  That was the first time a thought of murder had ever crossed my mind.  In my first fifteen minutes, I was already Dr. Mengele of the modern rodent holocaust. 

He had escaped with his life that night.  However, with the devastation he had caused, this moment became my Pearl Harbor.  Now, this was war.  

That night I had a dream about a mouse crawling up my nightstand and across my head as it lay resting on its pillow.  I awoke in the morning with a flash and hurried to investigate my apartment to see the tell-tale signs of mouse intrusion.  Surely enough, filth pellets were strewn everywhere and crackers crumbles adorned the kitchen counter.  I went to grab my shoes so I could head out the door and, as I lifted one up, the mouse was clinging to my shoe as I innocently brought him closer toward my mouth and eyes until he leapt off and scurried away. 

I did what any New Yorker would do: I waged a violet campaign.  I ran to 99¢ USA to buy whatever tools of death were prominently displayed on their walls.  I came home with a bag full of glue traps.  In order to determine where the traps should be place, I needed to think like a mouse.  I examined all of the intricate places that he was likely to run.  To fit the traps into his assumed path, I ruined a pair of good scissors while trimming through glue so I could place the traps as close as possible to the wall. 

Then, time went by.  I would come home from work and peek at the traps like a toddler watching Amityville Horror.  It was exhilarating and distressing all at once, like Purim at the dentist's office.  I never saw the mouse.  Over the next few weeks, it's lifeless body didn’t turn up in any of my traps.  The only thing that I ever found in one was a cockroach the size of an Almond Joy and, strangely enough, that didn’t bother me at all. 

When my mother planned a visit to town, she was naturally going to stay with me.  Before her arrived, I had to tell her my dirty secret, that there was a furry fugitive on the loose, like a sleeper cell waiting for a moment to attack.  She said it would sleep on the sofa instead of the air mattress on the floor, but that she would be fine.  I took all of the necessary precautions from clearing out all of of his hiding places to vacuuming out the dust and crumbs from under the fridge and stove.  I even put out some tasty poison for him to snack on when he got hungry. 

Naturally, the weekend went by without incident.  I suppose that the mouse, too, was taking Memorial Day off. It had been so long since I had seen him that I thought he had moved on to dirtier homes. 

Then, this morning, I woke up early to go for a jog (don’t ask) when I saw a ball of grey fuzz rush past my bedroom door.  Like Shirly MacLaine in 90% of her movies, I was all screamed out.  I no longer feared this revolting pest.  Rather, I just wanted him fucking dead.  At that moment, I would have stepped on his skull with my bare foot if it meant never seeing him again.  As I later headed out the door for work, I dreamed about a way to put an end this madness.   

That was when I launched the final solution. 

On the way home from work, I stopped at the store for a surplus of traps.  When I got home, I used the scissors to form them into a barrier that I placed under the broiler of my oven, having learned that's where he was entering from.  After my ambush was in place, I went in the other to watch Audra sing on PBS.  That's when I heard a terrible noise in the kitchen.  I entered slowly, fearful of seeing my enemy in his final moments of treachery.  and sure enough, there he was, his ass and feet and tail glued firmly in place as he sang an aria of death in the key of screech.  I prepped a trash bag to help clean up the crime scene, but I paused.  After all the time that I wanted this mouse dead, I couldn’t help but notice how cute it looked dying there.   I didn’t know how I would be able to follow through with committing this act of voluntary mouse-slaughter.  Meanwhile he just lay there, howling. 

I texted the dilemma to a friend.  His response: “Yeah.  They do that.  You need to take it outside and bash it on the pavement.”  Revolted, I knew I needed to follow through to make this an official "Game Over".  I picked up the trap and ceremoniously threw it in the bag.  I pinched the bag between my thumb and forefinger and ran down the stairs of my building.  The bag spasmed all the way as I carried it to the dumpster and tossed it in.  Let me tell you, if you’ve never killed an innocent creature, the whole experience is less glamorous than pissing in one’s pants. 

With that behind me, I can rest easier.  Now, his Reign of Terror has come to an end.    The King of Mice that wore the seven crowns has been defeated and may God rest his vile soul.  And may this be a lesson to the rest of his loathsome kingdom; if you ever think to threaten a New Yorker where he lives, you just may leave writhing in a Glad Bag.