A Short Episode
...in a life that seems more and more episodic.
Yesterday, I found...ok, back up a bit. There were a range of odd coincidences that led up to the finding, and so that I can portray this particular piece of my history in fullest color, I feel that I should go over them first.
The people on the very end of our apartment building, two doors down from us, have been away for the last few weeks. I think the woman might be having heart troubles. Besides a possibly bad heart, the woman also possesses two small, yappy dogs. They have flat, smashed in noses and too much hair, and, in typically yuppy fashion, seem to be in existence merely to be groomed, in between crapping in public areas. Since our neighbor has been away taking care of her medical ailments, the dogs have become increasingly lonely, and since she began her protracted leave-taking, have begun an equally protracted (and much more annoying, loud, and obvious) campaign of constant barking.
Our next door neighbors, the ones between her and us, are actually leaving their apartment because of it. They are moving out because this woman and her uncontrolled biological toys are too torturous to live next too. I can understand -- the things nearly wake us up, drown out our television, and keep our nerves exposed and tight, and we've got at least three walls in between, not just one.
But Adam and I hadn't said anything, because everyone around here has tiny tinny yappy dogs, and about half of them let them bark unchecked (including our downstairs-next-door neighbor, who actually wound up killing her labrador because of her total lack of disclipline towards animals, leading to a subsequent lack of a sense of responsibility for their well-being [I can only speculate, really, since I can't concieve of the mindset of someone who is so utterly without empathy towards their animals that they'd get rid of one they ruined themselves through lack of discipline, all the time knowing the method used to discard inevitably led to the animal's death -- because the Humane Society, and everyone knows this, is too damned packed to even hope for the adoption of an untrained, fully adult, romping rowdy lab]) Yesterday, I decided enough was goddamned enough, I wanted my damned silence back and they'd been barking nonstop for an hour and more and dear god, it was like the goddamned flu, every other dog was catching it -- so I went and knocked. They ignored me (without doubt, they knew my errand and didn't want to hear it, because ten minutes later the dogs actually stopped, and even if I was suffering from a small amount of pent-up confrontational aggression that was a relief) and so I decided to write a note.
And I decided that I wanted to sit down at a table to write it. I haven't wanted to sit down at a real table in -- well, since I moved in, pretty much. Ergo the constantly cluttered condition of the dining room table, the only table of appropriate sitting height in this apartment. I think I, personally, have sat at that table maybe five times in the entire time I've lived here. Anyway, I decided to sit, but the vacuum was sitting in front of the chair I wanted to sit in, and so I picked up the vacuum...
...and there was a mouse. The tiniest, cutest little mouse I've ever seen.
Well, Adam and I went into automatic mother mode and fitted up a box for it, gave it food and water. It kept falling asleep as it was eating. Its head was about the size of its body, which meant that it definitely wasn't full grown, just barely out of diapers I'd figure, so I was really worried about its ability to digest the adult rat food we were giving it. I figured it wouldn't last very long, it was so weak when we found it...
It surprised us, though. Since it could barely support the weight of its own cranium, we figured that we could leave the box open, so we could look in on it and coo happily to it anytime we wished. We also put the box in one of our dressers, so we thought that even if it escaped the box, it would be stuck in the cubby hole to which the box was relegated. We were wrong -- we left the room for about 15 minutes, came back and the mouse had disappeared from the box, even from the cubby! After a few minutes of slightly panicked search, we found it -- on the very top of the dresser, running back and forth "Merrily" (you'll see) and seeming healthy and chipper as -- well, as healthy and chipper as Pip, even, and Pip is as happy and healthy and chipper as rats come. Aftr recapture, we simply placed heavy books across the top of the cage to avoid disastrous repeat.
This morning, I woke up and it's dead. I thought it might die overnight; it was too weak when we first found it. We already named it, "Merry" because Merry totally goes with Pip (which is easily changed to Pippin, because we're both fandom-geeks like that) and because Merry is appropriate if it's a girl or if it's a boy. Having named it makes it more sad. We were really planning on keeping it, if possible, it was the cutest little mouse I've ever seen and never even made a gesture towards biting. That really should have warned us, though -- if it was too weak to bother trying to defend itself, there was really little hope of its being strong enough to survive.
At least we made it's last day pleasant for it, what with the bounty of food and protection from the cat...
So, now that the pet factor is gone, Adam and I are left with just one thing -- where the hell did the mouse come from?????
Yesterday, I found...ok, back up a bit. There were a range of odd coincidences that led up to the finding, and so that I can portray this particular piece of my history in fullest color, I feel that I should go over them first.
The people on the very end of our apartment building, two doors down from us, have been away for the last few weeks. I think the woman might be having heart troubles. Besides a possibly bad heart, the woman also possesses two small, yappy dogs. They have flat, smashed in noses and too much hair, and, in typically yuppy fashion, seem to be in existence merely to be groomed, in between crapping in public areas. Since our neighbor has been away taking care of her medical ailments, the dogs have become increasingly lonely, and since she began her protracted leave-taking, have begun an equally protracted (and much more annoying, loud, and obvious) campaign of constant barking.
Our next door neighbors, the ones between her and us, are actually leaving their apartment because of it. They are moving out because this woman and her uncontrolled biological toys are too torturous to live next too. I can understand -- the things nearly wake us up, drown out our television, and keep our nerves exposed and tight, and we've got at least three walls in between, not just one.
But Adam and I hadn't said anything, because everyone around here has tiny tinny yappy dogs, and about half of them let them bark unchecked (including our downstairs-next-door neighbor, who actually wound up killing her labrador because of her total lack of disclipline towards animals, leading to a subsequent lack of a sense of responsibility for their well-being [I can only speculate, really, since I can't concieve of the mindset of someone who is so utterly without empathy towards their animals that they'd get rid of one they ruined themselves through lack of discipline, all the time knowing the method used to discard inevitably led to the animal's death -- because the Humane Society, and everyone knows this, is too damned packed to even hope for the adoption of an untrained, fully adult, romping rowdy lab]) Yesterday, I decided enough was goddamned enough, I wanted my damned silence back and they'd been barking nonstop for an hour and more and dear god, it was like the goddamned flu, every other dog was catching it -- so I went and knocked. They ignored me (without doubt, they knew my errand and didn't want to hear it, because ten minutes later the dogs actually stopped, and even if I was suffering from a small amount of pent-up confrontational aggression that was a relief) and so I decided to write a note.
And I decided that I wanted to sit down at a table to write it. I haven't wanted to sit down at a real table in -- well, since I moved in, pretty much. Ergo the constantly cluttered condition of the dining room table, the only table of appropriate sitting height in this apartment. I think I, personally, have sat at that table maybe five times in the entire time I've lived here. Anyway, I decided to sit, but the vacuum was sitting in front of the chair I wanted to sit in, and so I picked up the vacuum...
...and there was a mouse. The tiniest, cutest little mouse I've ever seen.
Well, Adam and I went into automatic mother mode and fitted up a box for it, gave it food and water. It kept falling asleep as it was eating. Its head was about the size of its body, which meant that it definitely wasn't full grown, just barely out of diapers I'd figure, so I was really worried about its ability to digest the adult rat food we were giving it. I figured it wouldn't last very long, it was so weak when we found it...
It surprised us, though. Since it could barely support the weight of its own cranium, we figured that we could leave the box open, so we could look in on it and coo happily to it anytime we wished. We also put the box in one of our dressers, so we thought that even if it escaped the box, it would be stuck in the cubby hole to which the box was relegated. We were wrong -- we left the room for about 15 minutes, came back and the mouse had disappeared from the box, even from the cubby! After a few minutes of slightly panicked search, we found it -- on the very top of the dresser, running back and forth "Merrily" (you'll see) and seeming healthy and chipper as -- well, as healthy and chipper as Pip, even, and Pip is as happy and healthy and chipper as rats come. Aftr recapture, we simply placed heavy books across the top of the cage to avoid disastrous repeat.
This morning, I woke up and it's dead. I thought it might die overnight; it was too weak when we first found it. We already named it, "Merry" because Merry totally goes with Pip (which is easily changed to Pippin, because we're both fandom-geeks like that) and because Merry is appropriate if it's a girl or if it's a boy. Having named it makes it more sad. We were really planning on keeping it, if possible, it was the cutest little mouse I've ever seen and never even made a gesture towards biting. That really should have warned us, though -- if it was too weak to bother trying to defend itself, there was really little hope of its being strong enough to survive.
At least we made it's last day pleasant for it, what with the bounty of food and protection from the cat...
So, now that the pet factor is gone, Adam and I are left with just one thing -- where the hell did the mouse come from?????