Three Dead Mice

One morning this week I woke up and just outside the bedroom a small mouse was dragging itself across the carpet. It didn't run from me. It looked sick and just about to drop. I put it out of its misery, bagged it and emptied the bag outside for the ghoul squad.

In the kitchen fixing breakfast, I saw a small dead mouse curled up almost beneath the stove and did a double-take. I had just dumped a mouse outside! It couldn't have fallen from the bag on the way out; I saw it plop from the bag into the grass! Using barbecue tongs, I put this body outside. Went about my business. Later in the living room, I smelled that funny dead-mouse-rotting smell, as if it were right in the room. Looked with a flashlight beneath the couch and such. Nothing. Hoped it would go away on its own, knowing it never does. I went out all evening, and back home went straight to bed.

Today, opening the shade in the living room I looked down among the computer cables and there's a little dead mouse curled up there and that's what stunk.

That first mouse looked poisoned, but I don't use mouse poison any more, precisely because poisoned mice die in inaccessible places like the attic or beneath the water heater, and stink for as long as six weeks. I use traps. So what's going on? Was there a nest? I can't find it. Were they family? They were pretty well grown, completely formed and furred, able to make their way; why aren't they surviving?

World of Warcraft, Country Style

Anyone who digs violent video games ought to try annihilating the mice in their house. This is not a game for sissies. This is rated Triple-X for real life and real death.

A foe made out of pixels is nothing compared to an enemy who scrabbles inside your walls all night, poops and pees on your stove and kitchen counter to taunt you, chews open triple-wrapped foil to eat your leftover pizza, and can squeeze through a dime-sized hole. Its speed and cunning make mincemeat of human weaponry and strategy.

I like 'em dead.

A cat is its only true match. Without one, I tried mousetraps. Meeses are, however, masters at eating up every atom of peanut butter without triggering the trap. When a trap gets 'em, its fun to see them dead -- their necks slammed flat beneath the wire, their beady eyes wide open, surprised. Crow about your victory, but there's lots more where that one came from, and each generation is bolder and sneakier. They'll peer at me over the sofa back, or run across my bed while I'm sleeping in it. They've stored corn in the bindings of my cookbooks, and in toes of my shoes. Little bastards.

My weapon of choice now is poison. They die. But they return to haunt me. Last year one died beneath the water heater, and the warm rotting corpse, inaccessible, stank ineffably for a full six weeks. The year before one died in the attic right above the bedroom. Little f----r.

One mouse actually crawled into a packing box and moved to a new house with me. For three weeks I worked almost full-time trying to kill it. Then one day, sick from poison it staggered out from beneath a cabinet. I got my broom. But before I put it out of its misery, and out of mine, I granted it its due. "You have been a most worthy opponent," I said, and I meant it.