Moanday: Escape from Rodentia

The time has come for a full and frank discussion about mice.

Some of us laydee types still retain the hard-wired genetic Eek-Response to these little critters. These are the lucky ones.

Others, like myself, have been conditioned by a lifetime of exposure to positive media depictions of rodentia in films like The Rescuers, The Rats of N.I.M.H., and Midnight Cowboy to replace the Eek-Response with the Aaw-Response.

Sounds good, right? We've been freed from our irrational feminine fears and may now wear trousers and go work down at the munitions plant at our leisure. But soft! What happens when a girl who's been liberated from the Eek-Response is faced with the unmistakable evidence of a mouse infestation in her own home?

Complete and total moral collapse. And that's what I'm living right now. It ain't pretty.

When I first saw what I naievely believed to be 'the' mouse, the Pinky-and-the-Brain-washing of my youth kicked in instantly.

'AAAAAAW!' I cooed. 'He is so PWESHUSSSS! I will love him and pet him and name him George.'

'Let's get a trap,' said the Man of the House.

'Noooo,' I said. 'Well, okay, we'll get a humane one. Because he's so SWEEEEEET.'

Within days, the facts of life they never gave you in Steamboat Willie hit me squarely, but thankfully metaphorically, in the eye.

Mice poop. They do it, and they really don't care where they do it. Also, they're quite good and jumping, climbing, and opening cupbpards. TO STEAL YOUR FOOD. And humane traps? Pfff, mice are WAAAAY too smart to fall for those old things. Why do you think scientists are always hanging out with mice? To plagiarize their brilliant mousey ideas, duh.

Also, mice have a lot of friends. Friends that they ask back to your place without even checking with you first. Friends with benefits who create even more mice, new mice who are stealing and pooping and partying in your Ikea kitchen units.

Mice, in their most essential form, are nothing less than incontinent, criminally insane, sexually loose supergeniuses. There, I said it. Somebody had to.

I know, I know, I could get in huge trouble for saying this. If I don't post again, you'll know that agents of rodentophiliac media have gotten to me and I'm strapped in a chair somewhere with my eyes taped open, experiencing re-education through an endless loop of Tom and Jerry.

Until such time as they get to me, I've called a carpenter to see if he can find where they're coming in and stop it up. Then comes the reckoning.

Humane no more, Mickey.