With no school year to mark the time for me anymore, I guess summer ends with the Minnesota State Fair. There’s probably a meteorological date or something, but lamb on a stick is a better way to mark the seasons.
I’m ending summer with a new view of the skyline, but I’m still in Minneapolis.
The main lesson: people are disgusting.
MIA the past few weeks? Me? What?
The last two weeks were normal on one level. I was busy living the Minneapolis yuppie life: work, long dog walks at the lakes, clubs, drag shows, cooking disasters, restaurants, cafes, museums, crazy hobos…
Over the past few months my apartment developed a mouse problem. Actually, I catch about 3 to 5 mice every day, so I think the word infestation is appropriate.
And it’s not just my apartment – tenants on multiple floors have mouse problems too.
Mice are expected during the winter but this summertime infestation was a mystery until today.
I have to show apartments as part of my caretaker duties. One of the apartments on the third floor will become available in two months so I keyed into it to make sure that the unit was clean enough to show.
This apartment sat empty for the past 8 months because the tenants decided to move to Michigan two months into their lease. They kept paying their rent, so this is the first time that I entered the apartment. I key into the apartment and the first thing I see is a kitchen floor caked in mouse shit and dead mice.
The apartment is trashed. There is furniture and random junk everywhere. Dirty dishes fill the sink, and there’s a giant bag of cat food just open on the kitchen floor.
The living room is worse. Rabbit food is everywhere. Mouse shit is everywhere too.
So the reason why my entire building was infested for the past few months is because these clowns left an unlimited supply of food out for the vermin in a vacant apartment.
Rodent infested apartment in Whittier.
I called the management company. They are livid. I’m pissed too. We can’t even clean the unit because they are still in the lease for two months.
I should take pictures and send them a post card…
It’s about 10 p.m. I am halfway through another episode of The First 48, (my favorite TV show) when I hear an a-rappa-tap-tap in the kitchen.
Long-time readers of this blog know about my struggles with mice in my new apartment building. At first I thought my neighbor kept pigs and then the mice somersaulted through my kitchen.
I eventually started fighting back, which meant that the dogs got hold of the poison mouse blocks and I dealt with “no mess” mouse traps that created pools of stinky mouse blood.
In short, the mouse situation was a flaming hot mess for a very long time.
I sort of gave up during these past few months. I still kept all food refrigerated or covered and occasionally put out poison blocks, but I basically resigned myself to vacuuming up mouse crap every few days and using ungodly amounts of Lysol.
Then while at Wal-Mart this weekend I see a display of mouse-glue-pads.
Harley was excited to see me after work today. I let him out of the kennel and his tail launched a candle from a coffee table. Glass shards rained over the living room, and I was unamused.
I re-kenneled the dog and cleaned up the mess. I then let Harley out and he followed me to kitchen, to throw away the shards.
Harley’s tail caused more chaos in the kitchen when he knocked over a bottle of bleach. I shoved the dog out the kitchen and tried to control the chlorox typhoon. I stripped my clothes1 and cleaned the mess wearing boxers and white flipflops.
I mopped the kitchen and then decided to clean the cabinet under the sink. I first removed the 40lb bag of dog food, not noticing the little hole nibbled in the corner, and then reached for a blue IKEA bag.2 I lifted the bag AND A MOUSE FLEW OUT OF IT!
I screamed, then roared. The mouse landed in the corner and somersaulted behind the stove.
I was livid. This mouse was going down and it was on like donkey kong!
What was followed was 30 minutes of me attempting to trap the mouse while not slipping on the bleach-soaked floor… all in boxers and flipflops. All that was missing was the Tom and Jerry sound effects.
I eventually gave up, but luckily, I bought poison mouse food blocks on tonight’s Wal-Mart trip. Anything remotely edible in my kitchen is now in a glass or plastic container. The poison is out. This mouse is going down. I just hope I don’t have to smell rotting mouse in the morning…
1 I have too many bleach spots on clothes not to do this.
2 The supposedly green bags… the only problem is I NEVER remember to bring the bag and end up buying a new one every trip…
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…