Rat carcass in alley this evening. Tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.

Sad when you almost step in vermin, and the first panel of Watchmen is the thing that leaps to mind. At least I didn't skid in it, like once before.

You always wondered what really goes into Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell food, right?

So, we came back late Sunday night from a weekend away to find another mouse snared by one of our traps.

This one was in the pantry, and it had been sitting there untouched for a couple of months. I came in from bringing the last of the luggage from the rental car and Laura pushed plastic bags, paper towels, and industrial cleaners into my arms. "There's something to clean up in the pantry," she said.

She had found it when putting Ella's food supplies away. The trap had caught the mouse right across the top of the head, nearly bisecting the poor thing's skull fore and aft. There was blood pooled a few inches away, as if the trap had jumped upon snapping, the mouse had thrashed hard while dying, or the blood had just flown through the air in a massive gout. Maybe it was all three.

I was half afraid the mouse's head would fall apart when I picked up the trap—the front of its head tumbling free, the back of the head following the limp body to the floor—but miraculously it held together long enough to get it in the plastic bag without having to pick up the body directly. Scrubbing the floor was as pleasant as you can imagine.

Surely there can't have been more than five mice in the house. Right?

I'm just sayin'.

Okay, for everyone who thought they did indeed want to see the flattened mouse, here you go. I guess it really isn't as flat as all that, but it's certainly flatter than a mouse should be.

(There's a little blood in the picture, just so you know.)

The other night, Laura and I were startled by screaming and running sounds from the apartment upstairs. I was up to my elbows in cleaning, so Laura 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 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 Laura 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.

When you get back from a trip, check the mousetraps immediately. Don't wait a couple of days.

I waited a couple of days. One of the mousetraps, way back underneath a large piece of furniture, was, ahem, occupied. It had flipped over in the process of snapping, and said occupant was, er, stuck to the floor.

Let's just say that disposing of that little installation and cleaning up after it was not the most fun I've had in recent memory.

Well, at least we didn't have a roach bomb explode on us, like some of our fellow Astorians apparently did.