Of (dead) mice and men

After yet another dawn awakening to the sounds of a Rodent of Unusual Size, I decided to up the ante and purchase more traps, turning my apartment into a sort of Saw for mice- if they wanted to get out of there alive, they were going to have to really want it, at least more than they wanted peanut butter, which is probably quite the existential conundrum for a mouse.

Settling in to do my Christmas cards, which consists of drawing snarky conversation bubbles coming out of the mouths of the characters found on generic dimestore Xmas cards, I heard a snap, followed by a loud squealing. My sympathetic nervous system, dulled by years of lackluster business confrontations that end with nothing more than a curt "Well, then, I'm going to have to get back to you", immediately went into Flight mode, carrying me a full fifteen feet away into the bathroom, where I made a sound that can only be described as a string of consonants interspersed with the kinds of sacreligious statements that make Quentin Tarantino blush.

Hey! Homonyms!

Composing myself, I was able to shut the door to my living/bedroom and turn on my backup CD player, drowning out the screams of the frantic mouse with a party mix from 2002. Cursing myself for purchasing the "Superficial Wound" traps instead of the fatal kind, I decided that the best thing to do would be to live entirely out of my kitchen and never, ever go into the bedroom ever again, even if it meant sleeping in the bathtub and limiting my wardrobe options to the outfit I had on and a ladle. Luckily, the realization that I would never get to see the new Real World that I was currently DVRing hit me full force, resulting in a violent bludgeoning with the non-business end of a broom, and the subsequent donning of a sultry little yellow rubber glove/trash bag number that would excite janitors the world over.

My grandmother's lingerie.

Satisfied that I had asserted my dominance over the animal kingdom, celebration was in order, but upon coming out of the shower the next morning, I was confronted with another trapped and yet annoyingly alive mouse, squealing under my couch. After another quick trip to the bathroom to take the Lord's name in vain and to briefly toy with suicide, I finally sucked it up, picked the trap/mouse up, and brought it to the window to release it onto the ledge, which hopefully bought me some karma that will ironically pay itself back by actually killing the next mouse I catch.