Mickey, Minnie and all the other Mice.

My hamster died a few months ago, after a long hamster life. He was a fat, slow, adorable ball of fluff, without a tail, of course. (Well, hamsters do have a tail but it's just a tiny stumpy thing.) I know hamsters are rodents, but they're really more like tiny teddy bears.

Having been rodentless for some months, I couldn't have been more shocked one evening when I was sitting on the couch, talking to DD, who was in the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something little and dark run FAST along the wall and disappear into the kitchen. We have inhabited our apartment for two years and have never seen such a thing--a mouse! (People who liken mice to hamsters have never seen the lightning speed with which house mice run, whereas a freed hamster will often just stand in one spot trembling and looking befuddled.)

We keep the apartment extremely clean and spare. Our place is small, our aesthetic modern, and we just don't have a lot of stuff. I like to think that if DD and I died suddenly, whomever would have to clean out our apartment could empty it in about an hour, and clean it with barely a quick sweep and a quick spritz of glass cleaner, and no bizarre secrets would be revealed in our drawers, under the beds, or on our bookshelves. My first incorrect assumption about mice, that only dirty places have them, was corrected in a hurry.

Like complete idiots, DD and I purchased various humane rodent repelling devices, like an electrical sound thing that they can supposedly hear, the sound bothers them, and they leave you alone. HA HA HA. Those don't work. Next, I purchased some sort of "humane" electric chair for mice. You put 4 AA batteries in this little box, smear some peanut butter inside, and the mouse goes in and gets electrocuted "painlessly". Well, we will never know. I have yet to catch a mouse in it! We also threw out all our dry food and teas, and purchased some expensive super sealing containers for the new dry food, rice, noodles, chips, sugar, etc. Same with the trash can and recycling can. We got rid of them and are now shopping for the fancy tight-sealing kind. They're more than $100 each!

We learned that our landlord has a whole rodent control department. Nice to know that the entire complex is infested, not just our unit! Awesome! A guy came and set up the traditional awful, scary mousetraps, plus some freaky glue traps that look like an old fashioned meat tray, only they're coated with some super sticky glue.
He looked around our apartment and determined that it was well sealed and that there was no way mice could get in, which of course, makes no sense. He also said that from the "evidence", or lack of, he concluded there were no more than 2 mice.

We've now caught a total of 4 mice... in the glue traps. Yes, this means a mouse gets stuck in glue and dies a horrible death. I read on the internet that the humane way to kill mice is either to drown them in bucket, in a bag held down by a brick, or to put them in the freezer. DD yelled when I told him this, and said we are neither setting up a drowning device, nor putting mice in the freezer with our ice cubes. I am afraid of my kitchen and am losing weight, without exercising.

But we got some good advice from someone else who had a mouse infestation where we live. She said to raise holy hell with the work order desk and make them come out, move appliances out, and stuff every conceivable hole with copper mesh before putting the appliances back. Apparently this is the best thing for blocking all access points. She also shared some DELIGHTFUL information about the hantavirus.