Mouse Invasion

Let me just preface this post by saying that I’m not a person who deals with rodents well. Or bugs. Or really anything that crawls around (babies excluded). Which of course creates a problem given that I live in Africa and bugs, rodents, etc. are unavoidable. Most of the time I choose to deal with this problem by living in a land of denial and pretending like there’s no way mice could get into my room. Well of course, once again, Senegal felt the need to go and prove me wrong…

On about day three of my brush with Dengue Fever (before I went up to Dakar), I was crawling into bed for the night when I heard a tell tale scurrying sound. I looked down just in time to see a mouse run across the floor in front of my bathroom and sneak under my bed. Now, bearing in mind that I was running a 102° fever and was already safely inside my mosquito net for the night, I thought to myself, “Ok, Elizabeth…its just a little mouse. It’s not going to hurt you. And there’s nothing you can do about it so just pretend you didn’t see it and go to bed.” Well, try as I might, that logic lasted all of five seconds before I crawled back out of bed and went to fetch my Dad.

So I walked into our sitting room where my Dad was watching the news and informed him that I saw a mouse in my room. I’m sure he was thinking something along the lines of, “So what?” but he indulged me and we went to try and get it out. Word spread to the rest of the family pretty quickly and soon everyone was in my room, moving all the furniture away from the walls and armed with broomsticks, etc. I really wish I had taken a picture of the situation because it was quite comical.

Twenty minutes later we still hadn’t seen a glimpse of the mouse again and I was starting to become concerned that I’d just hallucinated it in my feverish state. Then we moved the refrigerator and the little bugger came scurrying out and dove under the bed again. Of course being the most easily startled person in the entire world, I screamed. So while I felt mildly vindicated that the mouse was not in fact a figment of my imagination, mostly I was now super embarrassed. Half of the family was bent over clutching their sides they were laughing so hard and I was ordered out of the room.

I spent another ten minutes or so anxiously hovering outside my door while my family continued the search. It wasn’t looking like they were going to ever succeed in killing it/chasing it out of the room when all of a sudden it darted out from behind a bookshelf and headed straight for me. More screaming. More tears of laughter from the family. But it had at least left my room and was now hiding under my brother’s bed. The whole family then moved into the other room to try and roust the mouse from there while I ran to my door and shut it immediately in case the stupid rodent should try to get back in my room.

I had very much hoped that this would be a one-time occurrence, but no luck. And I have to say, the family wasn’t quite as amused the second time we had a “let’s get the mouse out of Amy’s room” party. So I’ve had to resort to putting out poison. I’m not really sure how I feel about poison/traps though. I don’t like live mice being in my room, but the thought of having to deal with dead ones is a bit too much for me. I suppose that’s what having a little brother is for though, right?

I am also not taking any chances of having mice get into my stuff anymore. All of my food and dishes are stored in either my trunk or sealed buckets. I keep all of my undergarments in a plastic bag. (The thought of a mouse scurrying around on my underwear is really more than I can handle). And I’ve even resorted to barricading the bookshelf that holds my clothes on a nightly basis. It’s a bit of a hassle, but I’m too cheap to buy a wardrobe with doors (which aren’t fool proof anyway) and it’s worth it for the piece of mind. So take that mice, you’re not going to get the best of me!