First it was the summer of the bedbug, then it was the year of the raccoon. Now, with winter approaching, it’s the season of the mouse. Rodent invasions usually happen when temperatures drop and they set out to find a warm place to crash. They roam alongside buildings and come in through the cracks in the brick, through heating ducts or even through your open door, right behind you. They can squeeze through spaces as small as the circumference of a dime – as long as their heads can fit through, their bodies will contort to follow. If raccoons are the “Other Torontonians,” then mice, with a population that one exterminator guessed to be “literally millions,” are the Other Other Torontonians.
It wasn’t always like this, at least not for me. I live in a 100-year-old building on the cusp of Chinatown and for the first two years, it was completely mouse-free. I ate ketchup chips in bed, relishing every mouse-free moment in a sea of my own crumbs and complacency.
The first time I spotted one of the beasts it was strolling over a towel, into the cavernous territories under my bed. Since then, I’ve seen little black blurs – they’re fast, these guys. They run along the walls because they can’t see very well, feeling things out with their whiskers and acute sense of hearing. Once I saw a particularly vacant critter sauntering nonchalantly in my living room, reminded only of its rightful place within the walls when I let out a rather unbecoming yelp. Take that, keen mouse ears.
There are tell-tale signs of invasion. The most obvious is that mice, in a blatant disregard of proper etiquette, leave their droppings everywhere. Licensed exterminator Jim Petty likens them to little black or brown pieces of rice. “If they’re passing through, you can usually see a little brown or black streak on the wall, they leave their oil on it,” he says. “If you hear scratching, that means they’re in the walls or underneath the floor.” Charmed, I’m sure.
For a light infestation like my own, the health risks aren’t serious. In the 90’s, Ontario ruled that government health workers wouldn’t get involved with infestations in private residences. “The province recognized that the big risk was when it’s linked to food preparation or institutions like restaurants or food service facilities,” says Reg Ayre, a manager with the healthy environments programs at Toronto Public Health. A mouse’s droppings can carry any number of viruses, such as the plague, E. coli and Hantavirus. According to Ayre, we’re relatively fortunate. “Toronto has a fairly low-level rodent problem. That’s comparing it to international standards,” he explains. “You can never get rid of them completely.”
My way of coping with the mouse was to name it Fivel, in a naive stroke of wishful thinking that there was only one. The rule of thumb, according to Petty, is,”If you see one, it means you have ten.” Mice, true to the order of Rodentia, are obscenely efficient at reproducing. Their litters clock in between six and eight pups and they can do this five to ten times a year. It might bode well for the presumably busy Fivel, but it certainly doesn’t bode well for me.
The proverbial camel’s back broke, however, when I saw a pocket-sized critter crawl into my stove, its naked vulgar tail following. Now all I can hear is squeaking, clicking and crunching. I’ve been reduced to jumping at my own computer cord, my own shadow, throwing (my roommate’s) shoe at the sound of scurrying. My nerves are wearing thin. It’s either they go, or my sanity does. The apartment ain’t big enough for both.
The options for getting rid of mice are abundant. There are traditional traps where -snap! – it’s over in an instant. But these involve removing the little mouse corpses, something that my squeamish heart and upbringing by my PETA-reading mother warrant me incapable of. Ditto glue traps, where the mouse gets stuck to a gluey pad and is left to starve. There are live traps, one of which is still in my living room, generally ignored by the mice who either know better, or really are too daft to find the peanut butter surprise that awaits. Instead of DIY solutions, both Ayre and Petty recommend to call a licensed exterminator at the first sign of activity. Exterminators know the little critters’ habits and will block off entry points with steel wool. Mice hate steel wool.
Contrary to their recommendations, my superintendent took matters into his own hands. He sprinkled little blue pellets around my apartment, which will cause my unwanted guests to die of internal bleeding. The poison causes their little bodies to dry up, limiting the arrival of insects and rotting odours. Poison is only dangerous when you have children or pets, and I have neither. Alas, I will just have to learn to live knowing that there is a mass mouse grave within my kitchen walls. “I just peppered pantry & kitchen corners, hope Mickey’s last supper is well reviewed by Zagat,” reads the text my super sends to me after the deed.
Oh, my heart.
