Mice - 11/19/14

                I’ve known that there are mice in my house for almost as long as I’ve stayed in it. At first, I couldn’t care less that they were there. Besides, they stayed away from me and my stuff – or so I thought. I mean, sure, I was a little grossed out by the abundance of mice in the kitchen and all of the food being prepared on the floor where the pesky rodents run around, but Deep (my host brother) gave me a pretty rude awaking on Dev Diwali.

                The earlier part of Dev Diwali had been amazing. I got breakfast with Alex and Steven and then explored the city with Alex, leading us to a temple with animatronic idols and the entire Ramayana printed on the white marble walls. Then, we all had a killer lunch at Dolly-ji’s house and went to a Sikh temple to see the festivities for the Sikh holiday that day. To top it all off, we went on a beautiful boat ride down the Ganges to see the ghats lit up by thousands of candles. Needless to say, I was in a fantastic mood before Deep delivered the news – a mouse had been curled up in my sleeping bag earlier that day. Worse, Deep didn’t even bother to move it! He found it hilarious that a mouse had appeared to enjoy my bed so much, but I was not amused. Up until this point I had kept my room fairly clean. The distinct lack of cabinets or drawers means that my clothes had to be folded on the table in my room or my whole room would appear a mess. That being said, once I found out that a mouse had been in my bed, I started taking a ton of precautions. I hung all my food in bags from hooks and made sure nothing was ever on the floor.  Then, the second incident struck.

                Every morning at about 4 or 5 AM I wake up and have to use the bathroom. Most days, I just keep sleeping since I get up at 6 AM anyway, but this particular incident happened on a Sunday, so I decided to get up and go to the bathroom so that I could sleep in. When I turned on the bathroom light, I saw that there was a mouse crouching in the middle of the room (the bathroom is shaped like a long and skinny rectangle). I stomped around and tried to scare it away, but the mouse would not budge. I took the bucket that I use to bathe and tried to tap the mouse out of the way, but it still would not move. At this point I suspected that the mouse must be pretty sick for it not to respond to any stimuli, so I decided I should just jump over it and do my business. I went back to bed hoping that in the morning it would have moved, but, alas, it was not so. Later that morning when I got up for the second time and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, wash my face, etc., I opened the bathroom door only to find a dead mouse keeled over in the middle of the floor.

                I told my host dad and asked him to get rid of the dead mouse and he assured me that a guy would come to clean it up. Again, however, when I returned home that night the dead mouse was still there – worse, it was covered in ants now. I went back downstairs to tell my host brother and he told me to take it and throw it out the window onto the street (aka how most families here in India dispose of trash). Knowing I wouldn’t get any help, I ripped some cardboard from the packages my mom has sent me and I scooped the mouse up. Now, the window have metal grates and the first time I attempted to fling the mouse out the window it didn’t go through and flopped on the floor by my feet. After letting out a particularly feminine squeal and jumping back a foot or two, I gathered my wits and successfully disposed of the deceased mouse. At this point I was exasperated that the mouse hadn’t been clean up earlier, not because I wasn’t willing to dispose of it, but because it would have been less unpleasant earlier in the day when the thing wasn’t crawling with ants and who knows what else.

                This second incident sparked an even more thorough cleaning and I searched everything I owned for traces of mice. I guess before I had been living in ignorant bliss, not wanting to believe that the small, brown things I found everywhere were mice poop. At that point, however, I examined every speck of dust and was appalled by the amount of mice feces in my room/on my stuff. I stayed up far too late that night putting tape around the legs of my bed and table so that the mice couldn’t climb up the sticky surface and devising plans to trap the little buggers. The plus side of this whole ordeal is that my room is always very clean. The downside is that I feel like I have to always be on high alert for possible things that might attract mice.