The other night, █████ and I were startled by screaming and running sounds from the apartment upstairs. I was up to my elbows in cleaning, so █████ investigated. Turns out the three roommates up there had spotted a mouse. And had named it Ernest.
When our landlord started renovating the apartment upstairs (and he's still not finished), the cockroaches moved downstairs to ours. Just as we were getting them under control, the mice showed up. We killed one mouse within an hour of laying out our first traps. It took a couple of weeks more, plus a long trip out of town, to kill our second. We've spotted other mice at various times, and Ella has even chased one to ground beneath the oven.
When I was done cleaning, I took a couple of traps upstairs to the girls and set one for them. But as I was leaving for work yesterday morning, I spotted Ernest or one of his doubles trotting down the front entry hall. He scurried into the space where a long, heavy section of unattached baseboard, meant for the apartment upstairs, leaned against the wall. I lifted one end of the board. Exposed, the mouse came scurrying back my way to attempt an escape beneath the door to the basement.
I dropped the board flat on him.
I was late for work, so I left cleanup until I got home. When I lifted the heavy board that evening, I saw that Ernest had been neatly flattened, just a delicate thread of blood running from his mouth. I used a putty knife to scrape him into a plastic bag for disposal, then scrubbed the floor with bleach and my hands and the putty knife with antibacterial soap.
I felt awful, but the little bounders carry disease, and Ernest didn't look as if he suffered much. Oh, and █████ took a picture before the cleanup commenced. I'm not sure whether or not I should link to it. People tend to click on links here even when I tell them not to.
