Wanna hear something gross? June 10, 2005 ~ 9:57 am
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , trackback
Waconah Falls, Massachusetts
Regan, Leenie, and Celti have already heard this story, because I was on IM with them last night after it happened, but I have to share with the rest of you. More stories of my reunion weekend to come, but this has to be told.
I’m cat-sitting for my friend Jordana while she’s in South Africa, and last night I went over to feed and play with her cat, Max, for a while. Time went by, it was 6:45, and I got ready to head home. I decided to go to the bathroom before I leave. Innocent enough, right? I lifted the lid on the toilet seat, and there was something in the toilet.
I looked again. It was a mouse. A dead mouse. The size of my hand, grey, with dark fur around its eyes that made it look like it was wearing mascara. I screamed, and dropped the lid. Now, this is New York City. This has happened to other people I know: the rodent gets thirsty and hot and is looking for a place to cool off, and gets a little more than they bargained for. My friend Eugene once found a rat in his bowl. Rodents are a part of city life. All that being said, they are not a pleasant part of city life, and they are definitely a part that I would prefer stay out on the sidewalk instead of in the littlest room of the house. Or any room of the house, for that matter.
I’ll admit it, my first thought was “They’ll be home on Sunday, they can take care of it. Friendship doesn’t go this far.” I actually followed through on that and left the house. As I was walking, I realized I couldn’t do that to them, so I called Rick to figure out what I should do. His exact words, I believe, were “Flush it. Turds go down, so can dead mice.” I hung up, pondered the wisdom of that statement, and decided I might as well go take care of it, because the smell would be pretty bad if I left a dead rodent there in this heat.
I unlocked the door of the house, went into the bathroom, and lifted the lid to check one more time that my eyes had not deceived me before I flushed. As soon as the light hit the bowl, the mouse started squealing and thrashing, because it wasn’t dead! I started screaming too and dropped the lid again. Max heard the squealing and came to investigate it, at which point I think I said “Sure, show an interest in it now. Where were you when it was outside the toilet?”
I called Rick again, panicked this time because the damn mouse was alive. He told me to fish it out with something, to which I responded moronically, “But it’s not my house, there’s nothing here to fish it out with!” And he said, “Well, you could still flush it.” I was in tears by this point, and I said “I can’t kill it! It’s alive!”. I hung up, found some tupperware (Rick’s suggestion for mouse retrieval equipment), and headed back to the bathroom.
I lifted the lid again, and see that the damn mouse is looking at me like “I will run up your arm to escape,” while thrashing about wildly and shrieking little mouse shrieks. I was screaming at the mouse to stop looking at me, it was screaming for me to get it out of there, Max the cat was screaming for me to give her the mouse. The upstairs neighbors must’ve loved it.
After a little maneuvering, I got the mouse into the tupperware, closed the lid, took the mouse outside into the back yard, and deposited it under a bush. It slunk away, and I headed back into the house where Max was still bitching me out. The whole thing, from discovery to release, took ten minutes, but damn it drained me.
I called Rick to tell him the outcome, and he said “Someday, that mouse will find you and help you out by taking a thorn out from between your toes.” I’ll recognize him, too. A large, grey, mascara-wearing mouse. I’m glad I saved him, but sometimes racking up the karma points is a bitch.
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