Oh the joys of apartment living.  A couple weeks ago, while prepping breakfast and lunch for Kristian and myself; out of the corner of my eye I saw something run by.  I looked again and a mouse ran back across the kitchen floor.  I screamed and ran into the bedroom, where my baby girl informed me that I was being a scardy-cat.  I called maintenance that evening and the next day they put down some bait trays in the kitchen.  I thought they may be too big (and Stan said the same thing when he saw them), but I’m at the mercy of maintenance, so what can I do.  My best friend joked with me that the stupid mouse would end up getting stuck on the tray over the weekend when I can’t get maintenance to get it. 

A week later I’m ironing clothes and starting on breakfast when I see the mouse run around the stupid, too big glue traps!  I scream, run into the bedroom again and Kristian just looks at me.  I end up late to work that day because I’m too much of a chicken-butt to go back into the kitchen to finish up breakfast and fix the lunches for 20 minutes.  I get Kristian to camp around the time I’m supposed to be at work starting a study that I didn’t know was starting earlier than usual  all because of a daggone mouse.  I knew those traps were too big!  And to think I was just thinking the day before that it was probably a fluke and the mouse wasn’t coming back.

Well…a couple days later I’m in the kitchen and I notice some black specks on my countertop.  In my mind they have to be pepper from the peppermill cause I just know they aren’t mouse droppings.  EEECKK!!  When I find them on my stove, I am furious.  I had tried to be humane about it and didn’t want to get the trap that would cut off the head; but after seeing the droppings I was thinking off with the head!!!  I keep a very clean kitchen; my countertops seem a little cluttered because I’m now in an apartment as opposed to my kitchen in the house, but they are clean.  I LOVE TO COOK, so of course I’m going to keep my kitchen clean.  But mouse droppings???!!!  That evening my brother brings me some extra pest stuff and I put it out in hopes that the mouse will go away. 

Sunday rolls around and we have a busy day; I want greens, sweet potatoes, and cornbread for dinner which I start cooking after we get home from church (I love first service) and Kristian has a birthday party to go to in the early afternoon.  Plus…it’s Sunday and I always bake something for dessert.  When it’s just about time to leave and I’m running around trying to get ready when I happen to look down at one of the bait trays and there is that damn mouse.  I screamed again and ran to one of my chairs.  Kristian looks at me like I’m crazy and says I’m tripping again.  She is excited about the mouse being caught in the trap and wants me to take a shoe to the head of the mouse to kill it or even better get a knife and stab it.  I have the girliest child in the world (I spend more time trying to keep her out of her dress shoe heels and dresses or the dress shoes and jeans, it the dress shoes period of any type of fancy shoe and outfit) so I have no idea where all of this blood-thirstiness is coming from.  The daggone thing is still moving around and I am freaking out.  I decide to go to the party and prayed the thing would pass out before we got back home ‘cause how in the world am I going to get rid of the thing while it’s still moving!  And it’s Sunday…maintenance isn’t coming over to do squat!  My girl predicted that one.

On the way home…I decided to call my father who lives less than 5 minutes away and asked him to come help me out, he agrees to come over and tells me to call him when I get home.  When we get to the house the mouse is still moving and now the ants are attacking the mouse because they can sense fresh meat.  The mouse is attacking the ants trying to get them away from him causing the tray to have spun around some.  I’ve called Daddy and although I still need to finish up my much anticipated meal I refuse to go into the kitchen because, yes, I’m a chicken-butt.  My sweet daughter wants me to just go kill it and I keep looking at her like, “who are you and what have you done to my baby?”  When my father finally arrives, he is making jokes and he and Kristian are discussing the best way to get rid of it.  Kristian is offering him my precious shoes to wak it over the head with.  They are both stomping their feet to scare the mouse and laughing about it and I’m still freaking out…I just want it to be gone.  My father finally says that it would be cruel just to leave the mouse attached to the trap still alive and placed in a dumpster so we should bash it over the head to kill it.  I had purchased a few pictures for the apartment and had hung up one in the bathroom so my hammer was still out.  I give him the hammer and have to go outside because I can’t be inside when he does it.  Kristian is excited about it and even wants to take a picture.  Where did she come from?!?!  When I step back into the apartment, the mouse and trap has been placed in a plastic bag for disposal and my dad is cleaning the blood off the floor.  YUCK!  I get out the Lysol cleanser and spray everything down including the hammer.  I was wierded out pretty bad, but I have no more mouse.  Yesterday I took everything off the countertop, AGAIN, and Lysoled it again then washed it with bleachy dishwater and I feel a little better.  And I do mean a little. 

I still hear this song in my head though…Ding dong the mouse is dead, the mouse is dead, the mouse is dead.  Ding dong the wretched mouse is dead.