Tags
I know there’s been a lot of critter talk around these parts lately, but I’m afraid I have another story for you.
Last night I went to sleep with the sheet pulled up over my head because there was a big hunstman in the top corner of my room and because the ceilings are high, there was no way I could get rid of it. So, bravely, I huddled under my sheet and prayed that I would make it through the night without the foul thing creeping over my bed and bungy jumping onto my face.
Turns out that I had more sinister things to worry about.
You know, I’m not sure what’s worse, spiders or mice. That spider was a bloody walk in the park compared to what I was about to encounter.
At 3.30am on the dot I was jolted awake by a rustling directly under my bed. I froze, listening, intent. Nothing. I made a fairly poor attempt to convince myself that I’d imagined things and settled down again once more in my makeshift white-knuckled sheet sanctuary, heart pounding.
A minute later it was back. Louder, more insistent. It was as if it could sense my fear and thrived upon it. It could only be one thing. A mouse. Luckily I knew an old trick guaranteed to repel rodents as well. I beat the crap out of my mattress. There is nothing that scares mice more than the sound of an hysterical human thumping a Sealy Posturepedic.
Huddling down once more, I made a conscious attempt to calm my breathing, convincing myself that my fail-proof method had no doubt chased away my intruder.
The third time it moved, I screamed.
Not a high pitched horror movie scream, I hasten to add, but a low, gutteral back-of-the-throat yelp, the kind used by people who know the end is near.
The little bastard had won.
Gathering my few meager possessions, I fled and spent the remainder of the night on the couch at the other end of the house. Bad dreams and night sweats kept me awake and more than a little uncomfortable.
At long last morning dawned, and I worshipped the daylight, certain that it would keep the vermin at bay. After completing a thorough torchlight inspection under my bed from the safety of the hallway, I concluded that my nighttime visitor had departed. What I hadn’t realised was that it had merely changed locations.
The problem with the daylight hours is that you can see the little ferals when they run out from under the dresser in the kitchen as you’re happily skipping past. Innocence shattered, you realise that your life has irrovacably changed, and not for the better. No longer are the daylight hours safe.
Trying desperately to find that silver lining, you realise that yes, while your life has changed, so has that of the mouse. Though it enjoys its freedom now, it doesn’t realise that the death bell is tolling. It won’t be long now before it gets a whiff of a delicious smell, peanut butter perhaps, or jam. Twitching its whiskers in glee it will locate the source of the smell and hurry towards it, not realising that it moves ever closer to the end.
And though I may not be around to hear it, I will tonight rest easy in the knowledge that out there, somewhere, the night will echo with the most satisfying sound in the world.
Snap.
Quiet As A Mouse – Margot and the Nuclear So-and-Sos
UPDATE: Offically declaring a plague upon my house. When feeding our chooks this morning, a mouse skittered away as I leant over to open the food bin. Moments later I was blessed with the corpse of another in the chook’s water bucket. Nice.
Rodent deathtrap from here.
elspethlomax said:
Spiders or mice? I’ve had a spider on my face before, that decided to fall on m from above. That wasn’t at all nice so I can’t say a mouse would be either. Gross.
itallstarted said:
I know, I remember! That’s the memory that kept circling my tortured mind as I tried desperately to get to sleep.
arizaphale said:
Right Agnes. Firstly; spiders are waaaaaay worse than mice and I am on my knees to you for your bravery at even getting into bed with one in the room. My ex once knocked one off a high ceiling with a broom and it was so big it made a sound as it hit the ground. (he then beat it to death of course)
Secondly; having lived through a mouse plague on the Hay Plain (NSW) and even having bought mousetraps from the supermarket in the last 12 months, I can tell you that mice have evolved and now sit chastely to one side of the trap and lick the pb off without so much as a blink. I have not caught a mouse in a trap for 20 years. Ratsack was the only thing that worked during the plague, although we did put a bucket of water in the shower and take off the exhaust fan cover. Mice do not swim well >:-)
I am so over this parade of nasties!!!!! Scorpions and HUGE redbacks last week and wasps and jellyfish on Saturday!
Is it time to move into an upper floor apartment in the city? At least there’d only be cockroaches……
Rick said:
Sounds like you need a cat. Our cats occasionally (around harvest time) find mice in the basement. Gives them no end of pleasure to dispatch the rodent, and then carry it around like a trophy.
itallstarted said:
Ariza – That’s what I was afraid of! I could’ve done the broom thing (though I still would’ve had to stand on a chair or something to reach it) but I was scared the bloody thing would land on my head or face or something. Or that it would land somewhere where I wouldn’t be able to find it. That ‘sound as it hit the ground’ line made my stomach literally turn over!
And speaking of stomach turning, that bucket trick is brilliant, but oh so disgusting! Who got the job of checking the bucket every morning?
You’re right about the nasties, I’ve never come across so many creepy crawlies all at once. I killed SOMETHING in the toilet the other day, and I’m still undecided as to whether or not it was a spider or a beetle or a scorpion – I’d never seen anything like it. Our tally: snakes, huge hunstman, wasps and mice. And a marauding goat. Cockroaches have never sounded so good!
Rick – we’ve had a couple of cats. One of them I’d had for about 8 years and she was just gorgeous but she disappeared one day and we found her a few weeks later – snake bite we think. We had another kitten too but she died about a year ago and I’m still not ready for another! Although the mice are making a pretty convincing case!
Pingback: Come to Australia - you might accidentally get killed « It All Started With Carbon Monoxide
Adam said:
I’m not surprised you’re going off on your travels. Are they strange but somehow predictable australian killer mice? I’ve lived in a mouse infested house for a bit and it’s no fun at all – I was up late reading something scary and had that ‘was that something moving seen out of the corner of my eye or is it just the book’ thing, and it was somethings moving, and they were around for an age, despite several people getting up in the morning and accidentally treading on them in their bare feet. What you need, I think, is this.
itallstarted said:
Hi Adam – luckily I haven’t witnessed any killer instincts from them yet! But I know they’re there, and that’s enough for me.
And a big fat ‘ewwwwww’ to your infestation experience! That’s exactly what I fear the most, one of them running over my bare foot. Gross.
And you may notice I fixed your error for you – an easy mistake to make!
cdv1971 said:
Yeah, we’ve got mice as well, but they don’t bother me so much. They’re kind of cute, actually. Maybe get a cat? And then a dog to get rid of the cat. Wait, this sounds familiar – rabbits, foxes, cane toads…
Tricia said:
Oh, how I hate mice, too! A few winters ago I put on my ski boots the first time for the season and…..BOTH had mice nests in them. EWWWWW. The crunch under my feet (and you know what I think of feet) was unbelievably gross (and, of course, shocking ’cause at first I didn’t know what in hell was in there!!)
Agnes, I feel your spider/mice pain. 🙂
itallstarted said:
CDV – CUTE? I don’t think so. And you’re right about the old fashioned Aussie way of dealing with vermin.
There was an old woman who swallowed a spider…she swallowed the bird to catch the spider that wriggled and wiggled and jiggled inside her…she swallowed the spider to catch the fly….
Tricia – that’s seriously, seriously disturbing. Doubled due to the whole feet thing of course. Thank you for your kind support!