I woke up on Saturday morning with a headache and a dry throat, so I staggered into the kitchen in search of some water. As I opened up a bottle of Poland Springs Sparkling Lime, I groggily surveyed the counter. I couldn’t quite place it, but something was wrong. Something was out of whack. Imagine playing Xtreme Photohunt hungover with your eyes crossed, and that would be me trying to figure out what was amiss in the kitchen scenario.

I ascertained that there was an eerily uniform bread shavings piled next to the toaster, under the storage rack, burying the onions and covering our cutting board.

I blinked a few times to clear my vision and moved in closer to the scene. Had my Tempura flakes somehow exploded from the cabinet? did the ceiling have dandruff? I took another swig of water and suddenly everything came into horrid relief. Something had tunneled through our loaf of olive bread, made a clean run from one end to the other, before heading for the Trader Joe’s Tuscan White. Something small, round, and hungry had decimated our stash of carbs.

A mouse.

Or, more likely, mice.

I decided that this was a job for Katsumi, because seriously? I fucking hate mice. He had the pleasure of arising to hysterical me yammering GET UP DAMMIT GET UP AND GO LOOK IN THE KITCHEN IT IS SO GROSS OMG EeeeEEEwwWWW. He spent an hour cleaning up bread crumbs and mouse shit while I hid under the covers and tried to think happy thoughts. Once I’d recovered, I ran out to Shaws to buy mousetraps.

I’d never had mice before. In Syracuse there were no mice, no matter how vile and rank the dish situation became. Living with my parents there were no mice, probably because my mother had made some sort of deal with the devil. We had that mouse in Newton, but I never saw it and therefore could pretend that it didn’t exist. But now, confronted with HARD PROOF of the existence ot mice, I was really up against it. I bought four traps, two clamp-y ones that seemed strong enough for the task and two weird circle-y ones that somehow trap the thing inside and suffocate the little bastard, so you don’t actually have to deal with dead mouse-body.

As Katsumi set the traps, we discussed the possibility of getting a cat to deal with our uninvited houseguests.

Eventually I calmed down about the whole thing, so much so that late Sunday night, while watching Spike TVs James Bond marathon, when I saw one of those little fuckers run right across the floor, I could calmly announce: “oh, there goes a mouse”, and sit back while Katsumi freaked out. What a baby, right?

(OK, maybe I was drunk and hence the tranquil response, but whatever. I saw a mouse RUN ACROSS THE DAMN FLOOR, and didn’t even bat an eyelash. Be proud.)