Eeeeek!!!....a mouse

There are a lot of glamorous things about living in New York City. There are also some not so glamorous things and sometimes those things have four legs and a tail.

Two weeks ago, as I turned the corner from our living room into our kitchen to go and put my glass in the sink, I made eye contact with a little critter peeking his head out of the burner in our gas burning stove. In true slap-stick comedy style, I screamed like a little girl and threw my glass into the air which hit the ground and broke into a million pieces. Once my nerves settled and I realized he had scurried back wherever he came from, I picked up my phone to call Anna and tell her we had a new pet.

Husmusen, as Anna lovingly named him (it means house mouse in Swedish), came out to visit us a few more times before we decided he had overstayed his welcome. We discovered that he was coming out of a hole in the wall and would climb up into the stove from the back. It just wasn't okay to have the dirty little scoundrel living where we did all our cooking; something had to be done.

There is never a pleasant way to get rid of unwanted houseguests and this was no exception. Anna would argue that there is however, a humane way to do it. She requested that we set a trap to catch Husmusen but not kill him. I was okay with this as long as she was willing to be the one who set him free. The problem was that he didn't go after the peanut butter in the trap until the day that Anna was in class. When I came home from work and realized he was in there, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't listen to him moving around in there for a few more hours while I waited for my brave roommate. Then, what was the point of trying to be humane towards the little guy in the first place? I put my newly discovered rodent-phobia aside and decided I was going have to get the trap out of the stove, run with it down the street as far as I could manage to hold it, put it on the ground and open the tiny trap door to set him free. And that's exactly what I did. When he darted out of the trap before I had hardly opened it all the way, I let out another little scream and then tried to act cool when I realized I had startled a passerby.

I ran all the way home, sprinted up the stairs and slammed the door behind me as if the little monster was chasing after me for trapping him in that small black box when all he wanted was the warmth of our stove and a measley taste of peanut butter. Silly to be afraid of mice, I know, but there is something about their beady little eyes that just irk me in some way. Now I guess we wait and see just how smart Husmusen is and whether or not he will ever be able to find his way back to our home and our stove.