Brought to You by the Department of Neurotica

(Next post, the Department of Erotica will be back. In the meantime...)

For the past month, ever since the exterminator put the glue traps out, I was secretly rooting for the mouse.

I can't say I felt as generous when I busted an entire gang of mice partying in my kitchen late one night at the tail end of winter, rattling around in my paper trash, their microscopic droppings decorating my countertops, dish drainer, even the top of my refrigerator. I had no warning, and it made no sense, as the only edibles I keep out are bananas; no matter, the mice suddenly showed up en masse like unexplained characters in a surrealist film.

I had no cat to take care of this situation; nor could I borrow one, as I'm allergic. So I spoke with my landlord, who lives in the building and immediately called an exterminator, who proceeded to seal up the mouse holes behind my oven and refrigerator. He wanted to throw down some poison pellets, but I worried that the little invaders would die behind something heavy, like my massive bookcase (my kitchen is unusually large and can contain many of my books) or the oven, which I actually use and is set on shims, as the floors in my apartment are on a definite slant. When I'm in cheerful, sporty mode, I think of my apartment as a sailboat slightly heeling over; in tortured artist mode, I think of it as the Brooklyn version of Van Gogh's room at Arles.

Point being, I didn't want to have to ask a stronger friend over in the near future to help me move my oven or bookcase and then deal with mice in rigor mortis. The exterminator, who I'm sure has to deal with squeamish customers all the time, simply nodded and said he'd just do the poison-pellet routine down in the basement, where all the mice visit to throw darts and shoot pool (just kidding).

And that, I figured, would be the end of that, although in retrospect I wonder at my sanguinity, as the exterminator reminded me that there was a 60-day guarantee and urged me to keep the receipt. But exactly a week later, while making one of my favorite drinks--chocolate milk, straight up--I almost had a heart attack when a lone mouse leapt from the top of the fridge to the countertop, and in the blink of an eye jumped again and vanished behind the stove. I was furious at the mouse for managing to scare me, and it was in this unbalanced state of mind that I picked up the phone and told the exterminator he needed to make an encore visit.

This time, I visited the basement with the exterminator (a different one from the same company), and experienced a surge of cold-blooded joy when I saw all the tiny corpses strewn about. "Poison pellets working," the exterminator observed. He threw some more around the basement, and then came up to my apartment to double-check that all the mouse holes had in fact been sealed, which meant a royal pain in the ass moving my shim-balanced stove. But everything was shipshape in my ship. "That one mouse must've gotten locked out," the exterminator said. That's when the glue traps became part of my decor. I have three rooms, and he put one glue trap down per room.

How can I explain my gradual change of heart? The mouse sometimes showed up near my rocking chair, which is not, by the way, in the kitchen. I'd be watching a DVD from Netflix, and out of the corner of my eye I would see the mouse flash past. Most likely it was just looking for food, and confused that it was locked out, but I interepreted this as evidence of the mouse's adventurous spirit. It had to be a downright genius, the way it managed to avoid the glue traps. In my mind, the mouse had certainly become a much more sympathetic character, with all its friends and kin having succumbed to poison pellets. I had no idea what it was living on--air? Maybe it survived on crumbs that had fallen behind my countertop. And I must admit that on two or three occasions, I deliberately didn't sweep up immediately after a sloppy meal, although I was extremely diligent in getting rid of the mouse droppings that were about the size of chocolate sprinkles.

This might be a good time to mention that in my dark past, I kept gerbils as pets, even wrote a picture book for children inspired by two of them. As an idealistic college freshman, I also rescued my Psych 101 lab rat, whom I'd named Templeton, from extermination for the crime of being a male rat who had successfully learned how to get more food pellets and run in a maze and was therefore of no further use to the Psychology Department. These actions hardly describe someone who is repulsed by rodents.

I was lulled into a false sense of safety. So, I guess, was my miniscule, mostly invisible new roommate. For the end was unexpected, and brutal, and unexpectedly brutal.

Over the weekend I was doing the dishes when I heard a pitiful squeak. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the mouse's good fortune had officially ended. How it had managed to get stuck in the exact middle of the glue trap I'll never know. It was also broad daylight--how was it that night after night, for the past month, the mouse had managed to run around and steer clear of the traps? I bent over, picked up the glue trap, and stared. Its half-closed eyes refused to make contact with mine. The shit had literally been scared out of it, and it looked like some skin and fur had come off its chin as it briefly struggled to free itself before realizing--smart mouse--that it was screwed. My first instinct was to free it, and I made a few tentative attempts to do so without getting my own hand stuck in the glue, but no dice. It was held fast.

Next I placed the trapped mouse on the windowsill in the main room for a minute so it could experience the soft spring air. I knew that there was no way I could wait a day or more for it to die, and it was out of the question to toss it in the garbage while it was still alive. I couldn't bear to let it suffer, as it clearly was. I picked up the glue trap and slowly walked back into the kitchen, to the sink, where I held the mouse under a warm running faucet. At first I only let the water run by its feet and stomach, in the futile hope that this action would unglue the mouse, but it was useless. The mouse, which I had unconsciously come to think of my mouse, struggled for an endless minute before it officially drowned, diminished in size because its grayish brown fur was now plastered to its tiny body.

The fact that it was a mercy killing gives me no solace. After the non-burial, unless you want to count the downstairs garbage can for non-recyclables, I disposed of the two remaining glue traps--an empty gesture, since I knew there weren't any mice left in my apartment, and most likely the entire building.

A moment of silence for the departed.