London: mice, mice, mice on my mind

I regret to inform you that I’ve had a change of heart… I think we have to kill the mice that persist in visiting us. Our apartment reeks of mint and still I’ve heard and seen evidence of mice activity, so the peppermint oil isn’t working. I even found under the kitchen sink a chewed up bit of cotton that I’d saturated with the peppermint oil, so for all I know, the mice have been enjoying the opportunity for minty fresh mouse breath.

I feel so bad because I know they just want to get warm. They’re probably looking for food, too, but I’ve seen no evidence of them in our food cupboards or any of our cupboards really, except the one under the kitchen sink.

I don’t care if they run around the walls of the apartment building (not that I can stop them), but I don’t want to hear them, see them or clean up after them. It’s like having unexpected guests, and unexpected guests are in my Top 20 Most Hated Things, somewhere between cancer and pugs. And I don’t want to see unexpected movement out of the corner of my eye or hear furtive scratching noises behind the kitchen baseboards — it’s freaking me out, raising my blood pressure, and generally disrupting my tranquility, what little I have anyway! I’ve been obsessing about the mice, spritzing the kitchen baseboards with peppermint water religiously, thinking about them first thing in the morning and the last thing at night — it’s like my own personal “Moby Dick”. And RC can’t take the peppermint smell anymore.

So I went to the local hardware store and stared sadly at the rows of mouse-killing chemicals and devices. I ultimately ordered some Eradibait online because it claims not to be a poison. It works by disrupting their digestive systems, making the mice bleed internally and lapse into a coma (hopefully after they’ve gone back to their nest), and then dehydrating the body, effectively mummifying them and avoiding stinkiness. ::sigh:: So it does do some of those terrible things. Poor mice!

I’m so conflicted… I want to feed them, kill them, keep them as pets, run away screaming, all at once. I also find it a little odd to be so viscerally shaken by the idea of personally killing an animal, since I eat plenty of meat and wear leather. Maybe because it’s not for any purpose, like for meat or clothing? Or maybe because I don’t actually kill the cow myself?

So I feel bad… However. This has to stop. The guy at the hardware store said not to take it personally, that everyone has a problem with mice, especially during the colder months. He also said they tend to come in to apartments from the holes around pipes, and sure enough, the water pipes under the kitchen sink have enormous holes cut out around them. And so it was that I found myself spending over an hour this afternoon on my hands and knees in my underwear, bleaching the hell out of the under-sink cabinet and stuffing up all the holes with steel wool. Dammit, mice! Not that it was the mice’s fault I was in my underwear; I just didn’t want to risk bleaching any of my clothing. But I was cold and slightly high from the fumes. It was weird. And it was sad.

Add comment February 19th, 2010

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traveler: I should write fortune cookie sayings…

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student: the anthropologist that wasn’t

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maker: getting my weave on

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traveler: Turkey day redefined in London

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traveler: 2nd Avenue blues, NYC

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I'm a Chinese-American girl, born in Germany, raised in NYC and the SF Bay Area, married to an Italian-born Peruvian boy, currently transplanted to northern Sweden London. The world is a funny and beautiful place. I enjoy eating, writing and photographing my way around it!

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