Update: Part Trois

Well I guess the plan to convince Simon that The Mouse was not just a scout in a vast army of Mice was a little premature as she has just informed me that she has seen another one. Or maybe The Mouse has just come back in spectral form. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Either way, the professionals will be called in. My mouse-slaying days are over.

Update: Part Deux

So we caught The Mouse. This morning, I was sitting at my computer, waiting for Simon to get out of the shower and still in the "dammit-it's-morning-i-want-to-go-back-to-bed-i-don't-wanna-go-to-work-waaah" fog. I was barely aware of Simon leaving the bathroom and walking by me to get something from the pantry, when all of a sudden...


"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

...followed by Simon running back into the room, cowering on her chair and pointing back towards the kitchen.

"The Mouse...is on...the glue trap!"

Oh, boy. I get up and look. Yup, there he is. The Mouse. Terrorizer of Souls. Invader of Apartments. The embodiment of the Devil himself.

I thought he'd be bigger.

I went to investigate. The Mouse was maybe two inches long, stuck by three legs and a tail, and just about the cutest thing you'll ever see. He was clearly very upset about being stuck. Simon, a few feet behind me and hyperventillating was asking why he wasn't making any noise and that if he had made noise then she wouldn't have had such a close call so why wasn't it making noise DAMMIT! On cue, The Mouse piped up. When she was done screaming, and after she expressed her concern that The Mosue was going to chew off his legs and start his reign of terror all over again, I sent Simon out of the room.

I won't go through the details as to what happened to The Mouse afterwards as I do not want any PETA activists storming my blog. Suffice it to say I did not actively kill The Mouse but I am reasonably sure that The Mouse will not survive the day. He is no longer in the apartment and for my peace of mind, and most importantly Simon's, that is good enough to put aside my general unease at the idea of extinguishing the lives of innocent animals*. A moment of silence for The Mouse.

Now I just need to convince Simon that The Mouse does not have back up.

*Spiders are not innocent animals. Spiders are never innocent. They are hellspawn and they must die.

Welcome to Taradise. Please check your brain at the door.

So out of morbid curiosity and an extreme lack of anything else to watch, I put on E!'s "Taradise," the successor to "Wild on..." I didn't think it was possible, but Tara Reid actually makes Brooke Burke seem like a member of Mensa. I believe I have now lost most of my higher brain functions so I am typing this as quickly as possible so as not to deprive anyone of Ms. Reid's pearls of wisdom.

Today's episode of Taradise takes us to Pamplona. Or as Tara says Pampalona. We're here to join the 8 day party surrounding the Running of the Bulls. Wow, eight days of drunken idiots. Tara must really feel at home here. Sadly, she chose not to run with the bulls, because her tour guide said he wouldn't protect her if a bull started goring her. Stupid honest tour guide. But she did get to meet with some of the participants. Like the guy who has not missed a bull run in 21 years. Says Tara: "He's got a history about him." Ooookay. Later, she takes a spot on a balcony overlooking the start of the run. A sampling of her commentary:

"Our balcony is totally money!" (said while jumping and clapping her hands)

"OOOOH... Run, guy! Run!" (as said guy gets trampled by oncoming bull)

We move to the arena where the idiots running with the bulls have been replaced by idiots who want to play chicken with them. While most of the guys are getting trampled, thrown, and generally making asses out of themselves, there is one guy who is performing acrobatics over the bulls, jumping and somersaulting effortlessly out of the way of the bull's horns. Tara's take:

"There's this one guy. He's good. He obviously practices. I don't know where you bull practice."

Good question, Tara. Where does one bull practice? After deciding not to participate in the actual run, Tara tells us not to worry as she found another way to participate by running with the kids in a mock bull run.

"I decided to run with the fake bull. It's not a real bull, it's a fake bull."

Wow. Glad she cleared that up. That was going to keep me up all night.

I guess it just goes to show you. Drunk, stupid, and horribly disfigured by your cut-rate plastic surgeion is no way to go through life. But it will get you your own show on E!

Update

The existence of The Mouse has been upgraded from "Alleged" to "Actual". Either that, or I have joined Simon off the deep end.

And mouse makes three...

So, we have a mouse. Allegedly. I say that because, despite weeks of sightings by my usually fearless roommate, the God of Hairdos, I have yet to actually see our furry squatter. But, since she says she has seen it on several occasions, I will give her the benefit of the doubt. I'm much more comfortable with the idea of a rodent roaming the apartment then with the idea that my roommate has gone off the deep end.

Of course, it may be a little early to rule that latter idea out, as it seems The Mouse has it in for Simon. An evil mouse, this one. It waits, you see, until I have gone to bed or left the apartment to make its move. It started as a stroll across the kitchen into the pantry, a move made in a dimly lit room late, late at night. Did she really see it? Even Simon questioned it. After all, she'd been playing on her computer for a few hours – maybe what she saw was just her eyes playing tricks on her. Our landlord arrived with glue traps to bait the little bastard and the next day patched a hole in the pantry that The Mouse might have been using to gain entry. But, no. The Mouse would not so easily be thwarted. On the Sunday night after the first sighting, after I had gone to bed, I heard my name being yelled. Weird, I thought. Why doesn't Simon just knock on the door? I got up to see what was wrong and found her cowering on the couch, pointing at my desk. The Mouse had expanded his comfort zone and was apparently holed up behind my desk, taking refuge in an empty wrapping paper tube. For the next hour and half, during which I sent Simon to the thankfully 24 hour Walgreens to get more traps, I constructed an elaborate setup to prevent The Mouse from running while I flipped the tube up and into an empty tub of animal crackers. By the end of it, my trap was looking a little like this:



Somehow, The Mouse managed to escape. Needing sleep, I ordered Simon to go to her mother's house since it was obvious that mouse catching was not my forte.

Over the past few weeks, Simon's had more sightings. Always after I had gone to sleep. More traps were set up, to the point that there was no earthly way The Mouse could make it out of the pantry or kitchen without getting hopelessly stuck. And yet, last night, he managed it. The Mouse, while I was out, had run out from under the coffee table and darted under the couch. The same couch that Simon was sitting on. The Mouse, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

So what gives? As I said before, I'm going to give Simon the benefit of the doubt and say The Mouse is real. Is it super-intelligent? Well, it wouldn't be the first time we've been plagued by absurdly smart creatures. We were held hostage for several weeks in our apartment by a gang of mutant flies with an frightening capacity to strategize their attacks. So how did The Mouse get from the pantry to the couch without getting trapped? The answer, I think, is clear...



Knock, knock, Neo.