The Mouse

(Sorry for my absence... Facebook has recently been claiming both my attention and my on-line wastable time. )

I share my room with a mouse. More exactly, I share my walk-in closet with a mouse, and that closet is all the personal space I really have. I knew it was there: I heard it rustling around and found little toothprints in my Christmas-stocking dried apricots. An entire tray of mouse poisen disappeared overnight, but I knew it was still alive and well somewhere.

Another half-tray of poisen pellets later, it started getting a little more impetuous. One morning I slept in until 7 or so, and went upstairs, as usual, to my closet to get ready for the day. I always turn on the closet light a second in advance to let my furry little roommate scurry back to wherever it holes up. Apparently it was not going to be frightened away by a little light this morning. As I stood there picking out a skirt, it walked nonchalantly out from behind my suitcase, stopped, and stared up in bored recognition. I snapped my fingers. No response. I shooed it away with my hands and. No response. I meowed and hissed like a cat. It just looked up as if to say, "Yo. Aren't you supposed to be gone by now? You're on my time."

On Good Friday, I decided to give my closet a spring cleaning... down to mopping the linoleum floor. That's when I discovered that the mouse was a chocolaholic. She (obviously a girl...) had stashes everywhere. She found M&M's in my purse, painstakingly pulled out the ziplock baggie, opened the bag, and carried the pieces to her pantries. I found about 30 pieces on the other side of the closet, inside a cardboard box of mementos which is inside a big plastic storage bin. Another handful of them were hidden between the folds of my extra winter pj's, along with two pieces of mouse poisen, a dried apricot, and some tufts of fur. One of these M&M's was the empty candy shell-she had licked out every bit of the chocolate. She also ate some of two packages of hot chocolate; she did not, of course, touch my cough drops or lollipops. I found the poisen, too- a large amount had been deposited in my hiking boot, and another large store in my hat. Oh well. Maybe now that I've thrown out her stuff and violated all the rules of roommateship, she'll get mad and find a new apartment. I haven't seen her all week.