The Mouse Story

{Warning: The following is grody. Maybe even to the max}

So way back in September I alluded to The Mouse Story and then never told it. Since I am of the belief that it's best to release painful memories, I shall write it out for you all.

Context (my old roommate truly believes that context is key and I have latched onto that philosophy with a vengeance): For two years I lived in a 4th-floor apartment with a roommate and her three cats. According to the slightly crazy lady on the 3rd floor our building was infested with mice. Jenn and I attributed the fact that we had never seen a mouse to the fact that A) Jenn has three cats, and B) the lady on the 3rd floor is slightly crazy.

In July I moved to a new apartment with no central air and cooled my room using a window AC and my big box fan, which had spent most of the prior two years lying on its side under my roommate's futon. One morning in September I was getting ready for school, when I happened to glance at my fan and noticed a dried-up leaf was stuck inside the bottom of the fan. As I went in for a closer look I realized that the "stem" was actually a TAIL and the leaf was furry.

Flashback to crazy lady on the 3rd floor and I realized that mouse had probably been in there for at least 3 months. Eeek!

Under my disgust was the thought "Poor mousey!" but then I'm a little off-kilter myself.

What to do, what to do? Yes, practicality says suck it up, pull the fan apart, and dump out the mouse. Not appealing. I called my mom. Her suggestion was to trash my fan and go to the Home Depot and buy a new fan, which happened to be on sale just then because she and my dad had just bought one. I love my mom.

However, on my starving student budget I couldn't quite justify that. Then I realized my roommate Angie is a biologist. I asked her sheepishly if she would get the mouse out and she agreed. Hooray!

So she took care of it and then I got out the Lysol cleaner and started disinfecting the fan. it was then that I noticed on the inside top of the fan was this layer of grime. Weird. I started scrubbing away and then looked at the paper towel. Fur! Ack! Apparently (grodiness really starts now) one of the fan blades had taken off the top of the mouse and thwacked it on the top. I mentioned that to Angie and she said, "Yeah, when I took the mouse out it looked like part of it was missing."

Ew ew ew.

And that's the mouse story. It was traumatic.