mouse in the kitchen

[These next few (half dozen?) entries will just simply be cut and pasted from Word docs, don't have easy internet access just now, so they'll be even more like straight-up, unedited journal entries than usual. Including date in title because they were written over the course of several days even though all are being posted today.]

26 July 2010

Housesitting for some friends, they’ve got a little problem with sugar ants (those tiny, little bitty ones) in the kitchen.

I’d been doing battle (yes, with a tiny sword and armor!) with some on the kitchen counter, which was where she’d told me they had a problem.

It was a really hot day, blistering, really, compared to our part of the world’s usual standard. I hadn’t eaten all morning and had been out in the sun too long watering plants, so I was suffering from both low blood sugar and a bit of heat stroke.

As I came back in through the back kitchen door (the one that leads out onto the back porch/stairs) I noticed some movement on the floor out of the corner of my eye. I looked down, and there was an absolute river of ants coming in on either side of the door sill. AAAAaaagggghhhhh!!!!! I dashed to get the cinnamon and sprinkled it madly all over the threshold, trying to dam up the flow.

I then commenced with the murdering, smashing little be-feelered crawlies like a madwoman. This took care of the immediate flow on the *right* side of the door, but unfortunately, it looked as if on the *left* side I had merely trapped about a million ants on the *inside* by confusing their scent trail and ‘blocking’ them inside the kitchen.

Now, here’s the funny part: In my fog of brain-sugar deprivation and sun-addlement, I glanced down to where the big pool of ants was, and wondered where they were all trooping off to. I saw two funny-looking little sticks on the floor and an odd little scrap of wood, kind of up near the baseboard a few feet from the back door, behind the leg of the little table the toaster sits on. My mind immediately flashed, “Mouse! Dead mouse, eww, in the kitchen! EEWWWWWWwwww!!!!! GROSS! YUCK!” Which thought I immediately proceeded to block out of my mind.

I attribute it to the brain fog, because three times my mind tried to flash me the ‘dead mouse’ message, and three times I blocked it out, not wanting to know, see, think about or deal with it. Yuck. So the remaining so-called ‘reasoning’ part of my brain that was attempting to operate oh-so-fuzzily on the maybe two or three remaining brain cells that hadn’t been fried by the heat, thought (very slowly and muzzily), ‘Hm, two little sticks. Little block of wood. Look closer. YUCK! No, don’t wanna don’t wanna! (all this of course happens in a split second, nowhere near the length of time it’s taking me to describe it). “Dead mouse and a trap,” my intuiting brain-part declares. “NO!” The other part is still in denial. Finally, the third time I looked at it, as I was bending down sprinkling cinnamon, red-hot chili peppers and cayenne on the *other* side of the big ant puddle (while removing the previous cinnamon-powder road block) to try to redirect the ant stream back out on their old path – I got close enough to see that, yes, indeed, those two little funny-looking ‘sticks’ were indeed the dead, dried-up hind legs of a poor little old mouse corpus. And the ants! Were EATING him! GROSS!!!!!!! AAAAAAaaaaggghhhhh!!!! All this went on entirely too long for a person who otherwise generally tries to comport herself as a grown human as often as she’s able.

So finally I’d faced it. I re-routed the ants as best I could, squashed a bunch of the unruly ones that weren’t heeding my attempts at ant-traffic control, and finally dealt with the dead mouse body. EWWWW!!! YUCK! Two plastic baggies between hand and – it – YUCK! Then a third bag to put the works in. Then very gingerly, after thoroughly scrubbing hands with hot soap and water, took a glove and (trying not to touch the bag while still carrying it) got it in the trash. EW.

Then came back in and dumped a huge pile of baking soda on the remaining ICK and muddle of confused ants. I think a lot of them got suffocated (and also possibly dessicated? I think baking soda has some drying action). A score of bold explorers seemed to set off for parts unknown, seeking sugar, for I later found a few in places heretofore un-beset (?) by them, such as in the bathroom. But after diligent death duty over the next few days, I didn’t see any more except the occasional odd wanderer. Interesting, they seem to sort of travel in small ‘herds’. I wonder if there are ‘leader’ or ‘scout’ ants that break the initial trail, leaving the scent path that the more sheep-like followers, um, follow?

[29 july addition: Sitting at the kitchen table this morning, saw a little guy running along the tabletop, proudly (I imagined) holding aloft his prize of some small white crumb, traveling some unimaginable distance to carry it home to his family. Or whatever. Anyway, I hesitated to squash him, tried to pick him up on a piece of paper to set him outside, where he could go about his business. But - he evaded my every attempt to 'help' him, and finally I gave up in frustration and not wanting to let him run free in the house: I squashed him! VERY sad face. For some reason, seeing him carry his little bit of food made him more - human??? to me, and therefore I suddenly couldn't play goddess any more. But I still killed him anyway, out of pure expediency. Guilt :-(