Mice!

Last night, I raised my voice at a mouse.

I’m not a confrontational person, but I’ve been working on how to better assert my limits. Strangers tend to overshare with me and in recent months I’ve hit a breaking point with receiving intimate details from people I’ve just met. These exchanges feel parasitic — I get nothing from them, but give emotional energy and active listening. I’m not sure if it was the man who cried to me about a friend’s suicide on a first date or the new coworker who shared her plan for leaving her husband within hours of meeting of me, but I can’t be a generous listener with strangers anymore. I’m too tired.

I wasn’t expecting my best boundary setting to come with a rodent.

Mice have been supporting characters in my New York journey. I lived in Los Angeles for ten years and never encountered a single mouse (though I did have a pet hamster for a while, maybe she communicated to other rodents that the space was taken). I moved to Brooklyn in October 2020, a very normal time to move to New York City.

My first Brooklyn apartment was a studio in Park Slope. The building was absolutely not up to code. I lived on the top floor and the stairs become more rickety by the day. When my octogenarian landlord gave me keys, he told me that he didn’t have a set because he didn’t like the “liability.” Throughout my year of living in that space, it became abundantly clear that my landlord did not care if I lived or died, as long as I paid rent. Fair enough.

Since middle school, I’ve put sentimental objects in shoeboxes that I keep under my bed. When I moved from LA to New York, my most precious belongings were shipped in a half-crushed silver shoebox with “DO NOT THROW AWAY!” written on it in blue Sharpie. You should know I’m nostalgic to a fault. I hoard memory debris. In 2015, I’d put a chocolate chip cookie in one of the shoeboxes. I’d gotten the cookie on a romantic date I’d had with an ex-boyfriend. He and I no longer spoke, but the saved cookie represented the sweetest moments of the relationship. Yes, I saved a chocolate chip cookie for half a decade and moved it across the country with me. In the spring of 2022, Broadway was back, baby and you bet I saved every Playbill I got. I opened the shoebox to put a Playbill inside and saw that my memories had been partially shredded. The cookie was reduced to crumbs. A mouse had laid waste to it and shredded many of my other objects to build a home somewhere.

I went on a hunt for droppings and found them. I told my landlord that I had a mouse. He recommended I put some peanut butter and poison on sticky traps. I did not do that. I don’t want to kill mice, I just don’t want them to live with me.

Soon after, I heard an animal dying in the wall. I recorded the desperate scratching on my phone and sent the audio to my landlord. He reluctantly came over. We both put our ear to the wall as I listened to an animal clawing toward us. My landlord claimed not to hear anything (likely true, he was old). We reached a stalemate. I bought some steel wool, shoved it in gaps, and hoped for the best. I never saw the mouse, but knew we were cohabiting. I’d given it a cookie, after all.

At my next apartment, my new roommate saw a mouse in our stairwell the day I moved in. I never saw that one either, but one morning I ate a piece of sourdough toast before realizing the bread bag had been chewed through and there were droppings inside it. I started keeping all my food in the fridge, even produce. I wondered if I’d brought the mouse with me. I never met that landlord in person, she ruled the building from New Jersey. We told her about the mouse. She did not care.

Two years later, I moved again. This time into a dreamy one-bedroom with landlords who seemed invested in my well-being. Several months into my lease, I was brushing my teeth and saw my first mouse. My bathroom is adjacent to the kitchen (dreamy as my apartment is, the layout doesn’t make much sense). The door between bathroom and kitchen was open. I caught a glimpse of something darting across the kitchen floor. I whipped around. We stared at each other. Before I could spit and speak, the mouse scurried under the kitchen sink.

Look, I know mice don’t have long lifespans but part of me likes to think it’s the same mouse that ate my sentimental cookie. It knows I’m a giver.

This time, my landlords and I took charge. I spent hours filling holes and gaps with steel wool and caulk. I bought airtight containers for everything in my pantry. They sent in the big dogs (i.e. pest control). There was no sign of the mouse, not even a dropping.

Until last night.

This year has been a spiritual slog. I turned 33 in June and for the first time I genuinely can’t believe my age. Despite earnest efforts to shift things, my career and romantic struggles persist. Every silo of my life has a Sisyphean quality. I know it will pass, probably, but I’ve been waiting for a sign from the universe on what to do next. I think the mouse knew I’m at an emotional lull and stopped being so fastidious with my food protection.

After eating too much sugar yesterday, I vomited (very toddler of me) around midnight. I’d left the bathroom door open. As I got up from the bathroom floor, I saw a mouse dart out from under my washing machine toward a bag full of food that I hadn’t put away. I stood and yelled, “NO!” The mouse stopped in its tracks, looked at me, and to my shock, listened. It turned around and ran back under the washing machine. I put the food in the fridge. I brushed my teeth. I went to bed and hoped for the best.

There are no droppings in my kitchen. Pest control comes in a couple of days. I think the mouse and I can co-exist until then. The next time a stranger emotionally dumps on me, I’m going to say “NO!” and hope it stops them in their tracks. Or maybe I’ll offer them a cookie from my memory debris.