Mice Tales, Part I

Shame on me for not posting. I've just been busy as a bee during this Government Hostage Crisis. I figure while I'm a hostage that's allowed to roam freely, I should get a thing or two done. More on that tomorrow.

Anyway, I was watching what is now my favorite all news channel last weekend, Aljazeera America. I like them because it is straight unbiased world news. I can watch and make up my own mind about what's on, without all the opinions.

They ran a story about an epidemic going on in Malaysia right now. Malaysia is overrun with rats.

*ladylee's face twists in horror*

And you could see they were overrun with rats. They filmed a couple running across the street.

Yikes!

It's so bad that the government is offering people 0.60 cents per captured rat. And there are professional rat trappers at work, too.

Well anyway, some professional rat trappers were being interviewed and they were talking about what was going on and how it got so bad. It seems that the street vendors don't dispose of their trash correctly and the rats get in it. And the rat urine gets in the sewer and water system. Many people have become sickened by this "rat urine disease", and close to 30 people have died as a result.

*crickets*

Goodness gracious alive. Could you imagine something like that happening here in the USA?

And they were saying, the ratio of rat to people is 7 to 1.

Wow.

I was thinking about this. Seems like they could put out some type of rat birth control for the pests. Or some D-con rat poison. Simple enough.

But not so simple. Somehow, rat waste is getting in the sewer system and the drinking water. So uh, poison and birth control... that could really mess up the townspeople.

So for now, they just trap the rats. The trappers that night caught three rats in a trap that night at a small open mall. (This in a country where there are estimated to be 200 million rats. I thought they would catch a good 100 rats at least. Sigh)

I don't have mice or rats now, but I have had them in the past. Twenty years ago, while in grad school, I lived in the Grant Park neighborhood of ATL, which is about 1/2 mile from my current P-town neighborhood. I was watching TV one evening and in my peripheral vision, I saw what I thought were 2 waterbugs run across the floor. I thought nothing of it. I didn't have my can of spray handy, and I thought I would just catch them later.

Then they ran back across the room.

And they were looking at me.

And they had big eyes and long tails.

They were gray mice!  Running fast. They ran right into the tall heater/radiator on the wall.

Oh how I hollered and jumped up and down on the couch.

I immediately called my boyfriend at the time and he came over.

And he watched as I packed a duffle bag of clothes. There was no way I was staying in my little duplex. Nope.

He suggested we go to the grocery store and buy rat poison. Then we would go back to my place and put it down. I was leery of this, but I complied. We bought a lot of poison, so much so that the cashier mumbled "Ya'll buying all the poison. Where ever you live, you need to move. I wouldn't stay there if I were you."

Whatever. We mixed the poison with cheese and put it down in my duplex.

So I stayed with my boyfriend for three days.  And when we came back, all the cheese was gone out of the rat poison. That meant that the poison had been eaten too.

I called my landlord, and they found the holes where the mice were coming in (one in the radiator, and one along a pipe under the sink. Those were plugged up.

But, when they were plugged up, a mouse was trapped in the house.

A pregnant mouse.

O_O

How did I know this?  By this time, I'd gotten a kitten from my brother, who was 9 years old at the time. He'd found it under the shed behind his house, and was feeding it. I brought the kitten home (my old cat Jeremy).

That's right. I had a cat! That meant no mice. Right?

So one day, I got a call from my boyfriend, who was at my place while I was at school.

"I'm just calling to let you know there's been a massacre!"

"What?" I said.

"Jeremy was in the kitchen trying to get behind the fridge. So I moved it. And all these baby mice ran out. I grabbed the broom and beat them down. Blood's everywhere! I'm gonna clean up everything before you get home, but I'm just letting you know there's been a massacre!"

I was stunned. I couldn't speak.

"And you need a new broom, girl," he added.

Ugh.

I was sleeping extra light many evenings following this mess. The cover hitting my foot the wrong way made me cringe. It was horrible.

I'd bought some humane mouse traps and placed peanut butter in them. I was still catching mice in the house. I wasn't humane about it. I placed the traps in a plastic storage bags and wrapped it with rubber bands and threw it in the trash outside.

"You're suppose to release them outside, LadyLee," my friend Carter had whined.

"The hell you say, girl," I replied. "Let them suffocate out in the trash!"

Jeremy had even caught a baby mouse. But he was just a kitten. He played with it, bouncing it back and forth between his paws. Sigh.

Finally they were gone.

My goodness. It took me a good six months to get over all of that. Anything moving in my peripheral vision whether it's a dropped bottle cap or anything, caused me to jump and yelp. Oh it was such a horrendous time.

And that was just me dealing with a few mice. Malaysia is infested.

An infestation of an entire nation is a whole nother story. I don't know how they are going to deal with it.

All I know, this Oldgirl won't be visiting Malaysia anytime soon.

I have another story about mice...

I'll post that one next week.