Awesome Disabled

CW: As you could predict, this story contains a dead mouse. Sometimes life contains a dead mouse, unfortunately.

I was teaching a writing class online one evening when I saw a little black scribble screech across the floor.

“So you can see the subordinating conjunction is… what was that?”

My eyes widen and I stare off to the side, before realizing that there were a dozen students with terrified expressions.

“Uh… sorry, everyone. I thought I saw a… I’m not sure. I think I saw a little visitor. Anyway, everything’s fine,” I say with a laugh. “Phew! That’ll get the blood pumping!” I take a few deep breaths. “Well, here we are. I guess now’s a good time for a break. See you in five.”

Anyway, long story short, I saw a mouse. But I wasn’t sure I saw a mouse. It had been daylight savings recently, and I was stressed as all heck, so my sleep quality was shot. Maybe it was the effects of a tired brain in an apartment alone after a super-long workweek?

Taking some steadying breaths, I turned on my phone flashlight and started searching under the stove, where I had seen the creature scurry. I wasn’t sure whether I was hoping to see a mouse (and thus confirm its location) or to not see one (and thus have doubt of its presence in my apartment at all). I didn’t see anything. When I returned to the lesson, I explained what had happened. My explanation was along the lines of, I thought I had seen a furry visitor, but I wasn’t sure, and I couldn’t find anything when I looked, so I’m sorry for scaring you. All is well.

I thought it was a figment of my imagination, until I saw another furry scurry a few days later. Even then, I still doubted it. Then, finally, my daughter Cleo texted me.

Um i think i just saw a mouse.

I was at the gym working out when I got the text. I responded:

Did you? I thought I did too. Will pick up a mousetrap.

I felt both disappointed and vindicated that Cleo saw the mouse. Turns out, she and Lis had set up a bunch of tween-kid mousetraps themselves (which mostly consisted of glass food containers littered all over the floor). After my workout, I stopped by the hardware store and bought five different types of mousetraps. “No kill like overkill” is what I told myself.

It’s important to note at this point that I rent an apartment. So yes, in theory, this should fall under the category of “the property management company’s responsibility.” But I’m a single mom, living on my own, and I need to take good care of my family and my home. I don’t want to be perceived as a tenant who allows mice to flourish in their apartment.

I haven’t had an issue with mice in my life ever, because I’ve had a cat since early adulthood. Then we got a shiba dog, and shibas are better mousers than cats are. Every mouse who’s come into my home in the past has been swiftly dispatched by the resident mouse-murderer, whether canine or feline. (Also, both cats and shibas are the absolute best. I miss them terribly.) But now I have a bird, which fills the same ecological niche as the mouse itself, so it has no interest in being a mouser. So, now, I need to be the grownup, and deal with the mouse myself.

I told my online class about my mouse problem the next time we met. I wanted to confirm that I wasn’t having hallucinations while I taught them last time. I told them the problems with not having a mouse-killer pet. One student suggested I adopt an owl for a while. One suggested hiring an exterminator. Both of those would be unpleasant for me to live with, but I appreciated their concern.

I thought about no-kill traps, but we know those are temporary measures, and that mouse just makes its way back inside. Plus, the terror the mouse faces being trapped for as long as it took for my to find it was not something I could have on my conscience. Hanta virus is an unlikely but potentially deadly outcome of this situation, and I have to care for my human children first. Plus, as a resident of a multi-unit building, I needed to take care of my part of things. I knew this little buddy would have to perish.

Part of the instructions on the mousetraps were to remove alternate food sources, so I cleaned out the pantry to make sure there were no extra rodent snacks around. I found an abundance of mouse poops, and knew that I could no longer delude myself to the notion that I had an uninvited visitor. Of course, I panicked internally, and of course, I didn’t show it, because I am the only adult in the household. Also, I’m a bad bitch, and I want my kids to grow up to be bad bitches, so I need my bad bitchery to be on full display, even when I want to curl up in a corner and sob.

So I cleaned out the apartment and set up all the mousetraps. At first, I wasn’t sure that they would work. There were a few days of no results, and I was starting to despair. I wondered whether I would need to adjust to the mouse’s presence in our home.

This morning, Cleo suggested we check the traps. I put it off, but she started looking at them. She said to me, voice shaking, “This one got a mouse, mom.” I gave her a hug, took a deep breath, and steadied myself to look. Sure enough, there was a dead mouse caught in the trap.

Luckily, it was clear that this mouse had died quickly, and hadn’t suffered. I bagged up the mouse and the trap, and threw them both in the trash, then solemnly walked them out to the dumpster.

I feel sad that this creature lost its life, and guilty that I’m the one who took it. I doubt why I should live and this creature should die– what makes me inherently more worthy than this little buddy?

I guess this type of thinking is necessary, even helpful. Two things can be true. I think the case of an uninvited rodent pushes most people’s dialectic reasoning abilities to the brink. Sorrow should be felt when any creature loses its life. Being a bad bitch doesn’t preclude feeling sorry that a blameless creature is dead.

This afternoon I will do another vacuum of all the mouse poop, and disinfect for hopefully the last time. We have left all the mousetraps in place, in case our buddy had other buddies. I hope it was just the one.

Normally, I like for these posts to have a lesson I’ve learned along the way. At this point, I feel like there isn’t a lesson here. I’m sad about the mouse, and I’m sad about the world. Human and non-human creatures are dying the world over due to greed, imperialism, and war. It’s hard to imagine that my minor grief over this teeny mouse that died in the trap I set holds a candle to any of the massive tragedy that is happening on the world’s stage. But I suppose it’s still valid. And maybe it’s even necessary. It’s important to be soft when the situation calls for it. Sometimes the lesson is that the situation is tragic, and that that’s an okay place to end up.