How to Kill a Mouse

This may have been one of the least efficient and most barbaric things I have ever done.

Due to holes in the screens covering my windows, mice have started invading my house for the first time. It took about a year and a half for me to see the first one in my house and now they keep on coming. I have two mousetraps that only sometimes work- I usually have to reset it several times before it finally snags the mouse. This past time was different though. A neighboring volunteer was visiting and needed to crash on the floor, wishing it to be mouse-free. Maybe five minutes after he arrived, the mouse sprinted across my “kitchen” floor and darted into the other room. The hunt was afoot.

First, materials list. Needed are the following:

Two pairs of shoes

Two heavy books

Pestle

Cinder block

Step-stool

Two brooms

Wooden dowel

Feather duster

Bug spray

Mousetraps

Laundry hamper lid

One pair of pants

Large piece of fabric

Empty soda bottle

Two cell phones

Head-lamp

Dresser

Piece of paper

A shred of intelligence or jus blind, dumb luck. (We chose the latter.)

Yes, that’s right, a feather duster. I don’t care what you think- I killed a lizard just the other day with its handle. Haha, the other volunteer was laughing at me wielding it though against the mouse.

First, we chased the mouse into my rec/storage room, the easiest place for it to hide. We blocked off the exit with the cinder block and step stool, leaving a small opening where we placed the two mousetraps in case it tried to flee. I was waiting outside and B began moving and removing any potential hiding places. There were so many old bottles and containers amongst other crap in the room. However, eventually we narrowed it down to the very last place possible: the small suitcase inside my larger suitcase. As soon as B removed the small suitcase, the mouse made a break for it! We both swung our respective blunt objects (feather duster, bottle, broom and a shoe) and missed, the mouse made a break for it, and it somehow managed to not trip either mousetrap. I need a refund… And to the “study” we went!...

Wait, no, it tried to get under the bookcase but then turned and ran into my bedroom.  Here, we thought we had trapped it. After all, the crack under the door was much too small for a mouse to get under. We start removing all hiding places again. The laundry hamper, the dirty clothes, the random shoes and such lying around were all placed together away from the dresser. We try to sweep under the crack under the dresser looking for the mouse but the duster was just not long enough. Or maybe the mouse had fled… So we start searching drawers one at a time only to find there was no entry for the mouse. We put the drawers back. Then B took the wooden curtain rod/dowel thing and starts sweeping under the dresser while I am waiting for it with a laundry hamper lid to trap it. B says something, I get distracted and the mouse flees… back under the door. Should have blocked it I guess.

Back to the study! Same process! This time, we narrow the hiding spot to under the bookcase again. We sweep under it, the mouse gets out, the shoes and brooms miss again, but the hamper lid does not. That’s a catch!

We don’t want this mouse to get out of this alive, as barbaric as that sounds. I guess, spending time here has somewhat diminished my view on rodent rights. We need to make sure this thing doesn’t escape again. But now it’s trapped under the hamper lid and if we lift it, he’ll escape! Well, my friends, lessons learned. We drag the lid back into my bedroom and I immediately block the door with some pants and the step-stool. Now there’s no escape for mister mouse. It’s only a matter of time… We move the lid around rapidly on the ground to disorient the mouse and then pull it over a waiting, armed mouse trap. THUMP. The mouse moves the lid by quite a bit so we weigh it down with shoes and books and a giant bear-killing sized pestle lying around. B takes first watch… and sprays bug spray under the lid to try and gas the mouse… Yikes.

This thing trips the mousetrap and doesn’t die. He trips the second mousetrap and doesn’t die. We try to take a large piece of fabric called a pagne that I normally use for a tablecloth and lay it on the ground. At this point, we just want the mouse out of the house. We think to move the lid over the pagne so that we can carry the whole ensemble far from the house and drop the mouse out into the wild. However, B lifts the lid up a bit too far, the mouse gets out, and it runs back under the dresser. 

UGH.

WARNING: This next bit just gets a little barbaric. I’m… I’m not proud of what happened here. We sweep under the dresser, blah blah blah… and it’s not there. As if from a scene in a horror movie, I look up and the mouse is somehow waiting ABOVE US!!! He had made a hole, and climbed up the back of the dresser. We get up and the mouse freaks out, falling back behind the dresser. Ugh. However, I shine a light behind the dresser and see the mouse comfortable stuck between the dresser and the wall. I don’t know what happened. Our adrenaline was pumping. We had been hunting this thing for over an hour. WE ARE MAN AND IT WAS MOUSE. Enough was enough. Again, WARNING. B yells PUUUSH three times and I body slam the dresser three times. The poor thing is trying to escape and is flailing wildly. After the third time, it manages to get out and falls to the ground beside the dresser. And what delivers the coup de grace? None other than the feather duster.

We sweep the mouse onto a piece of paper and carry it outside and dump it unceremoniously into the courtyard. All of my neighbors are staring at us like we’ve gone mad. After all they’ve been hearing all sorts of bizarre things coming from inside the house.

I’m not proud of this. Let this blog stand as a testament to my sins. But this is life here in Burkina. A local would not think twice about killing the mouse and would have taken much less time. Before I host Thanksgiving dinner for neighboring volunteers, I need to close up these holes in the window and really make my house mouse-proof. We are never going through all of that again. No sir.