One year ago...

...

I was in Philadelphia meeting my PC stage-mates for the first time, eating Philly Cheese steaks, and getting ready to leave for Madagascar. Now, one year later...I'm poking a living mouse with a stick which has conveniently gotten stuck to my glue trap and the floor a few inches from my bed. Glue traps are highly effective but really disgusting. Basically I covered a piece of cardboard with really sticky glue and waited for the mice to come. The first night I didn't get any...then night two I caught one. But I didn't realize it until I had climbed out of my bed and looked for my flip flops which were a few inches from something that looked like it crawled out of a sewer (if they had those here).

The problem with glue traps are they catch the mouse, but you have to kill it. And I've never had to kill a mouse before... When my dad would find them at our cottage, I would hide in my room until they were gone. And the one summer when Mere and I found a mouse in the house where she was housesitting, we managed to trap it in a closet with two cats. And then I didn't have to think about them anymore. But now I didn't have my dad to kill it, or a closet and two cats....so I could have hit it with a shovel like most volunteers, but that's gross. I didn't want to look at it or hear its high pitched obnoxious squeaking noise, so I got my speakers out and put on my ipod really loud to try to drown out the noise...and then I covered my broom with plastic bags so it wouldn't also get stuck to my floor. And then I covered the mouse with a piece of cardboard so I wouldn't have to look at it...and then I poked at it for awhile until it became unstuck and I pushed it onto another a piece of cardboard and threw it down my hill. I didn't even throw up. But unfortunately it landed face up, so everytime I went outside that day, the sticky mouse on the cardboard would taunt me. Eventually it 'disappeared'...which means either the kids got to it...or the chickens, or dogs, or who knows. But it was out of my house!

Corey 1, mice 0.

The next night I caught another mouse, but didn't realize it until I was sitting in my chair, happily eating my oatmeal, when I saw a sticky mouse tail under my shelves. So I had to start the whole ordeal all over again....loud music, broom covered in plastic bags, and holding back my nausea. I eventually got rid of this one too, but it was equally disgusting.

Corey 2, mice 0.

Now that I've disposed of two living mice in my house (both before 8am!), I feel like I can do anything! But I'm over the glue trap thing....I got rid of them. I'd rather hear them squeaking under my bed than try to unstick them from my floor. This whole experience makes me grateful for parents who kill mice, and cats. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure I won.