Mousegate 2009: An Update

Another week has passed, and still no bloody dead mouse corpse.

For some reason, the exterminator only calls and schedules appointments before 7am, which is an hour and a half before I'm normally awake. But I've been patient because I've come to the conclusion that Osama is a genius and only a professionally trained mouse-hit man can end him. Last week I woke up at 6:45am along with Lauren and our futon-guest, Anna to anxiously await the exterminator's arrival. Right before he arrived, I got up to turn the air conditioner down and felt tiny terrorist claws run over my feet. Needless to say, I screamed like a child.

The exterminator--let's call him Mr. X--arrived and told us that if we wanted, he's 'spray' in the kitchen. From the respiratory mask he wore, we assume whatever it was, the spray was extremely toxic. Mr. X then told us that he'd put packets with poisonous cakes in them around the place, near the traps, in our bedrooms...everywhere.

So now we have traps rigged to snap with the slightest pressure (covered in Skippy peanut butter, because apparently Osama isn't classy enough for organic almond butter), some kind of biohazardous spray in the kitchen, and poisonous treats in baggies sporadically thrown around.

In essense, our apartment is the opposite of baby-proof. We might as well have live frayed wires next to buckets of water and littered the floor with used hypodermic needles from an AIDS clinic.

Funny thing, at one point, Anna and I saw Osama squeeze out the front door through a tiny hole where our door runner doesn't quite reach. Optimistically I thought maybe he'd indulged in one of the deadly bagged treats and left to die. But then I heard him rustling about and spotted him run under the fridge earlier today.

Lauren and I had a crazy moment last night after we heard Osama, when we were perched on the futon meowing at him. If only we weren't allergic to real cats.