It was a dark and stormy night. No, really, it was.I'd been held hostage in my apartment most of the day, waiting for the rain to abate, trying to find inspiration to do something. Anything at all. I was unsuccessful.
After enjoying a traditional Manhattan bachelor's dinner (California Pizza Kitchen brand frozen BBQ Chicken Pizza, eaten while lying on the sofa in front of the TV drinking a Coke) while watching three episodes of Sex and The City, I joined him and his partner down the street at a neighborhood restaurant for dinner.
Okay, they had dinner, I had a Grey Goose martini, dry, no olive. Oh, and some cheesecake.
Don't look at me like that.
Anyway, a fine time was had by all. The storm was still raging when we left; my friends live around the corner from the restaurant; I had to walk about six blocks home. Rain was pouring from the sky, flowing in torrents in the gutters, the wind was blowing, turning my umbrella inside out and snapping the spoke-thingies, tearing the fabric off. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees, and I was sopping and shivering by the time I got home. I decided a bath was in order.
I got the water running and then went into the kitchen for a glass of water, when I saw this:
I yelped, in a gayish sort of way.
Normally when I see a mouse (yeah, this wasn't the first time) they're as startled as I am, and they run away. Well...this guy just sat there.
Hello.
I watched him for a few moments to see if he'd do anything. You know, like....run away. Or perhaps sing "In the Still of the Night." I went back into the bedroom and got the biggest, clunkiest shoes I could find. Noooo! I wasn't going to stomp on him. I just didn't want him to attack my feet.
It could happen.
So I gently stepped over him on the way to the fridge and got some water. Stepped over him
again. He just sat there. He was definitely alive. He was breathing and moving his head around. Anyway, I went and took my bath.When I got out, he was still there, so I snapped a few pictures. He's not shy.
Anyway, then I went to bed. When I got up this morning, he was gone. He did leave some turds on the floor. Sigh.
14 comments:
perhaps you have lived in the city to long to remember the more popular country opinion, That when an animal isn't scared of you its a bad thing and either sick, or has been crawling around your bed. You really should kill it.
Tim
Well, it did occur to me that perhaps he wasn't well. I thought maybe he'd be dead on the floor this morning when I got up, but he was gone, so I guess he's okay. I'm not really into killing things. But I am increasingly tempted to get a cat...
He can come in my bed as long as he promises not to bite, poop or snore.
Get one of those (admittedly expensive) electro-acoustic rodent repellents you plug into a socket. It sends some sort of signal through all the electrics which prevents mice and the like from nesting in your walls. Hugely effective - I can recommend them.
Where's your super-duper mouse trap? The one where you catch them and then walk over to the park and release them...
Of course the North Shore Animal League does need folks to come in and help out a poor cat evacuee from the South -- I would imagine southern cats would have very nice manners.
JF
I hate killing little creatures and I think rodents are cute. But a mouse that doesn't run away would freak me out. I would probably think it had rabies and then I would have to destroy it just so it could not give its diseases to others.
The signal thing you plug into the wall sounds like a great idea for people who dislike killing animals. If I had a mouse I might invest in one of those. I don't like cats as much because they catch the mouse and they play with it in their sadistic little paws until they tire of torturing the small creature and kill it. Then they bring it and set it in some super obvious place when guests come over.
The super-duper mousetrap is on the floor in the bedroom near the mousehole under the radiator. This was the kitchen mouse.
I think he was sick, after all. I just came home from shopping and he was in the living room, not very lively. I scooped him up into a wastebasket and carried him over the park next to the synagogue. Poor thing.
Andy, if your standards for having someone into your bed are that they don't bite, poop, or snore, then maybe you have to relax your standards...well, biting and snoring are one thing, but everyone has to poop sometime...oh, you meant in the bed! Well, there is that.
I dunno, that sure looks like an alQaeda raised-and-deployed deer mouse, no doubt dipped in hantavirus:
http://www.doh.wa.gov/topics/hanta.htm
;-]
He is really cute though . . .
Matt bought his sisters pet mice- they were cute, mine was the cutest though.
We also had a cat that would gut and decapitate rodents on our front porch.
I've heard cat's leave them as presents?
One night my parents ordered pizza, and our littlest sister answerd the door- telling the nice delivery guy "careful, there is a head, right over there."
not realizing what I sounded like I assured the nice man "don't worry, we cleaned it up."
Yeah, Mittens used to bring my mom birds.
I remember having a mouse problem in our barn growing up, inadvertantly caused by leaving the trash can lid off the chicken feed.
My mother went out to feed the chickens one morning and got the suprise of her life when she scooped up a handful of feed and a mouse ran up her arm. Needless to say, my brother and I spent the better part of the day ridding the barn of mice.
Our mouse problem was taken care of by using a handful of feed on the grund as bait, a quick climb to the rafters and two Crossman 260 BB guns. Don't suppose you have a vaulted cieling?
TK, I'm a fag. I'm much more likely to have a vaulted ceiling than a BB gun. Duh.
Andy, your last comment...classic.
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