Half-Naked Mouse

If you know me, and some of you do, you know that I am an office manager for a decent size office in Boston. Being an office manager means I do everything from systems administration to billing our clients to ordering supplies to setting up mouse-traps in our office. Our building is fairly old and I guess we have a history of rodent tenants. I fortunately missed the era when there was the occasional rat wandering in and out. Eeesh.

But now it means that we have mice. Months ago the sales reps were complaining that their food was being nibbled and that there was evidence of mice throughout the office. So the exterminator put out mouse-traps. And months passed by and we caught nothing but we also didn't see much else, so we were okay.

A few weeks ago one of the sales reps commented that he saw a mouse in the breakroom. This does not surprise me because they (the reps) regularly leave the breakroom in a state of "hey look, a bunch of animals just tore apart their lunches with their teeth in here." There are always crumbs all over. We may as well have set up a salad bar for the mice, it was so messy in there. I try to keep things clean, but I can and will only do so much. I am the office manager, I ain't yo momma.

So the sales rep says, "I keep seeing that mouse in the breakroom." I ignore him for a while, but then the rep gets annoyed with me and comments that he saw him again on Monday. I finally decide to re-position some glue traps from around my desk to the breakroom. I put one down next to our little mini-fridge, and then I try to put one behind the water cooler. There wasn't room, so I start moving the cooler out a little, and as soon as I touch it, the mouse comes flying out of the back of the water cooler.

I am not afraid of mice as I used to have various rodents for pets as a kid, but this one still startled me because it came out of nowhere. I jump back and then comment to our general manager (whose office is right next to the breakroom) that I just saw the little furball. It's funny because the guys in our office are the wimpiest about this. The GM goes, "Eeeewww, please just get rid of it."

I go back into the breakroom, and much to my surprise, the little bugger is already stuck to a glueboard. We've had traps out for about 8 months and caught nothing, but then I move one about 12 feet and whoomp, there it is.

Now this is the sad part. The poor little guy was now stuck. And actually, he wasn't all that little. I'm used to tiny little house mice, but this guy had obviously been dining at the breakroom restaurant for some time now, all while living in the back of our water cooler. So now I have to decide what to do with the mouse that's stuck to the trap. Our GM whines again, "Eeew, please get it out of here. I don't do well with rodents."

What the f am I supposed to do with him? Who the hell is the guy who said glue traps are more humane than snap traps? I ask the sales rep who had been complaining about the mouse to give a hand. He goes, "Oh, geez, just keep it away from me."

And then I asked Jord from our production section to help out. He says, "Well, I have plastice knife...maybe we could take him downstairs to the alley and pry him off?" Sounds fine to me.

So Jord and I walk down the hallway with a plastic knife and a mouse stuck to a glue board. Our account manager walks by. "Don't ask," I say.

And in the end, the little mouse made it off the glue board with some prying. He lost a bit of hair in the process. He's probably pretty scarred now as well. I imagine if I was his size and became stuck to a huge piece of plastic and had these two huge humans staring down at me with a knife, I'd be scarred for life as well.

Now I just picture this little half-naked mouse sitting in a mouse bar, drinking alone in the corner. Some other mouse goes, "Man...what happened to you?" And he just says, "I don't wanna talk about it."