Of Mice and Women

Warning: this post is not for the faint of heart (or for the easily-annoyed-by-white-girls-complaining).

Did you know that en français, “mouse” and “smile” are the same word? Yeah, if you wanted to say, “You smile at the mouse,” it would be, “Tu souris à la souris.” Except you don’t smile at the mouse. You scream and throw shoes at the mouse.

Let me back up and say that I really lucked out with my apartment this summer. It’s in a great location, I can walk to work, and my three roommates are the best. Sure, we don’t have central air, or a lobby, or a doorman, or an elevator, or a gym, or paint on most of the walls, or windows in the bedrooms, or doors on the bedrooms (my bedroom door is currently leaning against a wall in the living room–Jordan Catalano style).

“I just like how he’s always leaning against stuff. He leans great.”

But most of all, I can sort-of-kind-of-almost afford it, which is all you can really hope for in New York City. And at the end of the day, I love my little West Village apartment, padlocks and all. What I don’t love? Our uninvited guests: les souris. Apparently in Northern cities, it’s normal to have the occasional mouse or two. Say what you want about the South, but that shit wouldn’t fly in Tennessee. Until this summer, I’d had very little exposure to mice other than in Disney movies. And I was perfectly happy in my sheltered world, blissfully unaware that mice don’t actually help you out in the kitchen (à la Ratatouille) or serve as in-house seamstresses (à la Cinderella). Dammit, now that I’m reminiscing about the films of my childhood, I’m positive that the mice in my apartment are an innocent Russian-Jewish family who were forced to emigrate to New York after their village was destroyed by Cossacks and their cats (à la An American Tail)…sorry Fievel.

Last week, I was in my room, about to go to sleep one night, when I heard screaming from the hallway. I’m used to this, considering that we have at least one mouse sighting every day. But this time was different–the screams continued, and I heard feet padding against the floor, and then the one, dreaded word that no New Yorker wants to hear from their roommates: “Cockrooaaacchh!!!!!!” No. It can’t be. Say it isn’t so!

It wasn’t, thank Goddess. If we had cockroaches, I probably would have moved out then and there. Try my luck on the streets. No, it was a small mouse that, out of the corner of my roommate’s eye, looked like a roach. The problem was that this mouse was in the bathroom. The teeny, tiny bathroom that four women share. The ONLY bathroom we have. Something had to be done…but obviously none of us wanted to do it. So imagine my surprise when my petite, gentle, yoga-loving, VEGAN roommate said she would kill the mouse. Oh, did I mention she’s also a model? Yeah, I wish I had filmed the entire incident because I’m sure there’s a market for videos of hot girls killing pests.

As a psychology minor, I can’t help but wonder what psychological trauma the poor little guy experienced during his final minutes, cornered in a bathroom while four screaming girls swatted at him with brooms. In the end, Gus Gus met his maker. He was no match for the Swiffer WetJet. We considered giving him a proper viking funeral in the Hudson River, but by this point it was like midnight and we were all pretty tired. The moral of this story is, don’t mess with the ladies of apartment 4.