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dogs / Uptown Apartment

MICE! or pigs…

I have mice in my apartment!

Well, either that or my upstairs neighbor started raising pigs…

I swear I saw a mouse dart across my kitchen floor a few days ago. I was mortified. As a Miamian, I am used to roaches and lizards, but not mice.

Que disgusting!
And loud!

At least roaches don’t scamper about and squeal. The noise has kept me up all night. I wake up to squeals from the kitchen, but of course the dog is useless. Bullmastiffs were OBVIOUSLY never used as hunting dogs.

I used to have a Dachshund. My dachshund would wake up if he heard anything squealing in the middle of the night, growl, and then hunt it down like a monster from Pandorum.

But no, not my dog.

First, he cannot hear anything over his snoring.
Second, when I do shake him awake like “OH MY GOD DO YOU HEAR THAT?” he opens his eyes, keeps snoring with his eyes open, and then rolls over like “bitch, I’m sleeping.”

USELESS! Absolutely useless!

So I tip-toed to the kitchen – where all the commotion is coming from – and I swear it sounds like Jerry Springer is holding a mouse session in the ceiling: squealing, slapping, and chairs being thrown… All of it.

But because the sound seems to come from the ceiling, I cannot rule out the possibility that my upstairs neighbor has a live pig or something in her kitchen. And no, that would not be strange in this apartment building…

Anyhoot, I am going to try to go back to bed. In the morning I may have to invest in some mouse traps, or get over my cat allergy…

16 Comments

  • abbie
    October 20, 2009 at 7:02 am

    awww mouse catching. i’m a pro:

    1. warm up a sliver of bacon – but don’t cook it.
    2. tie it to a mouse trap and make sure none of the bacon hangs over the side (or they’ll just nibble on it).
    3. set up traps along the walls. check back when you hear the snap

    Reply
    • Jansen
      October 20, 2009 at 7:49 am

      See, I don’t really want to deal with a dead mouse! Is there a way to catch them? I’d totally keep them as pets.

      Reply
  • Cee
    October 20, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    Pests suck. What is this, it seems like we’re all dealing with it all at once, all over the country…

    Reply
    • Jansen
      October 20, 2009 at 9:38 pm

      Is this a normal fall thing? It’s cold so they come inside?

      Reply
  • Kim
    October 21, 2009 at 8:37 am

    All I can tell you is if you’re not wanting to kill the cute little mice… for the love of God, don’t use those sticky “live” traps. They’re VERY deceptive. The box is all “oh, the mouse gets on here and it gets stuck and then it just sort of sits there until you come and rinse its little paws free and then it dances off into the city park to rejoin its family…” but in reality, it’s actually “the mouse gets on here and it gets stuck and then it FREAKS OUT and struggles to get free, probably injuring itself HORRIBLY and GRUESOMELY in the process, and then you freak out when you see it, and try to rinse its little paws free (if it hasn’t already died from its horrible stuck-to-glue-and-struggling-injuries) and it doesn’t work and you probably end up drowning the poor thing in the process, which, come to think of it, might have been more humane than using these stupid freaking traps in the first place.”

    Not that I’m traumatized by my family’s one-time use of these traps or anything. Nope. Not at all.

    Perhaps a little tiny box trap would work? Like the kind you trap stray cats in, only very tiny and made of cardboard and a toothpick or two?

    Reply
    • Jansen
      October 21, 2009 at 1:39 pm

      Never heard of the box traps… one of my friends says that the mice die of exertion when trapped on the sticky pad… ugh.

      Reply
      • Kim
        October 22, 2009 at 2:09 pm

        Yeah, it’s not in any way, shape or form pleasant.

        And I don’t think they actually make tiny little box traps for mice… I was thinking of the kind of trap that my dad used once to trap a groundhog. It’s a sort of rectangular cage with… oh, I don’t remember how it works, if I ever knew. It’s been a while. Maybe you could prop a box up with a stick, and tie a string to the stick and just wait for the mouse to go under the box, hahaha.

        Reply
        • Jansen
          October 22, 2009 at 5:44 pm

          That is waaaaay too intense. I’ll spend hours on it and my dog will just crash into it.

          Reply
          • Kim
            October 23, 2009 at 9:01 am

            Truth. Maybe you could just try reasoning with them?

            Reply
  • Sarah
    October 21, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Yeah, my dog is useless, too. Yesterday I came home to find that a mouse has invaded my house. Or possibly an army of them. My silly little dog (a cocker spaniel) was frantically trying to get at something under the couch. So I looked. At least 20 kibble from her food bowl were under the couch. And it all had to have come from her breakfast that morning because it’s a brand new type of kibble. Now, this dog will guard her food like she’s on a desert island against other dogs. But apparently, she let some industrious little mouse make like 20 trips to her food bowl without complaint.

    Reply
    • Jansen
      October 21, 2009 at 1:38 pm

      That’s hilarious! I wonder why the mouse moved the food…

      Reply
  • karina
    October 22, 2009 at 12:05 am

    If you catch them they can make you beautiful clothes and help you do your chores. Just watch out for the fat one, it’s a big clumsy.

    Reply
    • Jansen
      October 22, 2009 at 7:01 am

      That’s one more set of animals to potty train…ugh.

      Reply
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