Today I found a mouse hanging out in our guest room. He(?) was just sitting there next to the big puffy reading chair. I contemplated chasing him. I contemplated feeding him. Ultimately I just shut the door so that Zoe wouldn’t eat him and left for work. Even if I didn’t pity him (which I did, he’s so tiny) I didn’t want Zoe to eat him. She could get bitten or catch something from him. Not that she was battering down the door. When I found him she was lying in the hallway, mousie in clear view. I spent today telling people about the mouse, and the universal reaction was revulsion. I’m missing some sort of trigger. The sight of a mouse doesn’t upset me at all. They don’t seem any different than a gerbil or a hamster, just smaller. I understand… blah blah blah disease. But I feel more grossed out and exposed on the subway on any given day than I do by the sight of a 4 oz. mouse ten feet away from me. Damon wanted to get a trap. My reaction to that was swift and negative, so we’ve agreed that he will caulk or otherwise fill around the radiator pipes where they lead into the apartment. This is surely where he wandered in from.
18 Jul
jaysaint 
Posted by larrycub on July 19, 2005 at 3:17 am
I’m the same way. Of course in a house of 8 cats, the poor mouse would never stand a chance.
However, if I did come across one, I would probably catch him and give him a nice home. I would just hope that the cats staring at him all day, wouldn’t give him a heart attack.
On a side note, I’m the one that has to capture the spiders in the house. Bob and Bruce will scream at them. Bruce will immediately try to squish them, and I would have to run over and grab the shoe out of Bruce’s hand. I then will capture the poor spider, and set him free outside. Of course what I don’t see, is the bird that swoops down and eats it. But oh well, I tried, eh?
Posted by baldsug on July 19, 2005 at 12:59 pm
When living in NYC, I never found the single mouse in the bathroom revolting. It was when the exterminator broke through the plaster and we saw that that single mouse had about 75 friends and they were all leaping all over each other and running around the floor that I got the ooky feeling.
Posted by jaysaint on July 20, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Why would you tell me this? You’re a bad person.
Posted by jaysaint on July 20, 2005 at 8:50 pm
All you can do is try.
If we ever meet I’ll tell you the story of when a maintenance man at my old apartment building caught the racoon I’d been feeding (he was living under the dumpster). I found him sitting in a humane trap (thank goodness)and sat on the hood of my car with him until the guy came to get him. Then I jumped into the passenger seat of his truck and insisted that I was going wherever the racoon was going, just to make sure he got safely away. There were a few discussions about liability, etc, but ultimately he wasn’t prepared to physically drag me out of his truck. So we drove to the woods together to let the racoon run free.
I guess I more or less just told the story. But usually I add lots of imitations and talk about the burritos I used to feed the racoon to make sure he was getting enough vitamins.
Posted by larrycub on July 21, 2005 at 1:36 am
What an amazing story! I would have kidnapped the raccoon and kept him. 🙂
So let me get this straight, you hopped into a truck with a stranger? Wow, you really are from the midwest. 🙂