Another Game of J-Kat and Mouse.....

Despite the fact that I’ve now been living in the bush for quite some time, I’m still not into my occasional roommates. I’ve chilled a bit on the lizards, when I see one scurry around as I come in the door I make a half hearted attempt to catch it and release it back into the wild. I’m no longer on a death mission with these guys. I don’t have the energy. I don’t send out a search and destroy mission like I used to, and I don’t really lose sleep over it anymore. I usually just inspect the seal on the duct taped protective barrier that holds the netting around my window. I verbally reiterate the agreement I thought we had, which is that I am ok living with them and cleaning up their shits so long as I don’t have to see them, and they keep the bug problem in check. I don’t think that as a landlord I’m asking too much, just some basic maintenance and discretion. They’re not holding up their end of the bargain.

But at this juncture the lizards are not the problem. Despite my best efforts to keep my place as unappealing to mice as possible (keeping two traps set at all time, keeping food in the fridge or closed cupboard) the mice have returned. I heard the little bastards the other night as I was sleeping, although at the time I convinced myself that at best it was a dream. Living in the size equivalent of a cardboard box (and a round one at that, which is a helluva thing for acoustics- you can never tell where the little bastards are hiding because the sound echoes off the round walls. I have to admit it gives him an advantage…) makes the idea of sharing it with anyone regardless of size or species unappealing.

The scurrying around had woken me several times during the night a few nights back, but in my sleepy confusion I decided it was likely just a lizard or one of those smallish (for Botswana) beetles that while small in stature can get underneath my rubbish bin (a bucket) and move the whole bloody thing. Although they can be a bit loud as you hear them scratching across the floor, we haven’t really had many troubles. The undeniable evidence that my wishful thinking that it was simply bugs or lizards was in vain was when I went to do some baking and found the mice shits in the cupboard. I’ve mentioned before, lizard shit is similar in appearance to mice shit, but has white stuff on one end. These were undeniably mice shits.

As it seems Seronga is too remote a place for Prince Charming to be dispatched to facilitate my rescue (and let me assure you, I would appreciate his presence in many more ways than one… I recently had to take apart, clean and reignite my gas refrigerator, and came to Dudu’s rescue when she left town and her sink clogged, which involved several drain-o burns and ended with me wrapping a towel around the end of her drain and blowing the clog out. Who knew I was so capable???) it seemed I was on my own.

I swore a little, cleaned the shits up, and moved the traps to what I imagined were more mice friendly trafficways. I finished my baking and went to bed.

“Now how on Earth did the mouse get into your house?” you ask.

Ah. Gentle American reader. There are some things about Botswana that will long remain a mystery, evading all hard earned wisdom and collective insight. This is why the concept of traditional medicine and a sort of black magic is so pervasive in Batswana culture, and one can find even very educated people who believe some of the stories of spirits flying around on loaves of bread at night to do their evil work. (I’m not kidding. I’ve had several nurses at my clinic tell me stories). As an American myself, I also feel that overall I should be able to walk into any unsavory situation, find the manager or person in charge (or at least the customer service hotline, generally manned by someone at a massive call center in India) and demand and explanation, an apology, and a discount on my next purchase. This doesn’t actually happen to be the way things work in Bots.. (although I did briefly consider calling the hotline that the President has set up and is manned by his personal secretary in order to field calls from any citizen in the country with a complaint about… pretty much anything. I’ve heard he speaks mostly English and I think we could probably be great friends…. But anyway).

Generally in Africa the questions of “how” or “why” are irrelevant in terms of the situation at hand, as it was with this one, and thus we must fall back on the ancient Afrikans traditional wisdom of “make a plan” as an answer to our burning moral and logistical questions. (And actually in this case, like all good murder mysteries, the mouse likely came into the house in the most logic defying and yet spine tinglingly satisfying of manners-through the front door. Since it’s been so hot I’ve taken to duct taping mosquito netting around the frame of my open door. It gets a bit sketchy around the bottom so I’ve resorted to just lining some what heavy things along the bottom of the frame- my shoes haven’t brought me this much joy and useful love since the States! Perhaps a stupid idea, but I’d love to hear yours….either way, the CSI mouse tracking light at the police station is down due to a problem with the generator, the solar panel and they have no transport to bring it here, so the true mode of entry will remain theoretical, like most things in Bots.)

Armed with the knowledge that there was indeed still likely a mouse in the house, I went to sleep. And what seemed like hours later (and in reality was closer to half and hour) I heard the tell tail ;-) scratching across the floor. I reached for my light and flashed it in what I hoped was the direction the sound was coming from. He looked at me, I looked at him, and he scurried back under the fridge. Now if you’re not familiar with the set up of my hut (please refer to pictures marked “my hut” on the picassa slideshow to the right of this page) the fridge is near the door. I again reset the mouse traps (nearly blocking the little bugger in, and pulled out the peanut butter. I placed some in the bottom of a jar in the middle of a bucket, thinking that if I could coerce him into this trap I may just release him. I put another dab of peanut butter in the direction of the traps.

Now I’m not a complete mercenary. As you can see I’ve given the little bugger options.

I turned off the light and sat on my bed (you bet your ass I was under that mosquito net) to wait for him. I watched him scurry out from under the fridge and start chewing on the netting that was now serving to keep him in my house. (Ok not such a brilliant move to keep the netting down during this process but hell, there were still mozzies and other creepy crawlers to worry about. Again, if you have any better ideas…..) I turned on the light and he started and hopped a few times and dove back under the fridge.

I decided it was time to step up my game. I found the long postal packing tube that P-funk had used to send me my kite back in September (yup, in the bush you hold onto strange things… Who am I kidding. I’m just the same pack rat I’ve always been!) I emptied a match box and put a bunch of peanut butter inside and slid it into the closed end of the tube. I thought if I could catch him going in there I could upend the tube and fling him outside.

See! At this point I was still thinking of catch and release!

It was the lizard that probably sealed the mouse’s fate in the end. As I was grabbing some duct tape for yet another convoluted plan a lizard darted out from behind the curtain. This was enough. All the animals were going to die tonight. I turned off my headlamp and waited to hear the next move from the mouse. The lizard scurried (and I hate to keep using the word “scurried” but this seems to be the only fitting description of how these little creatures move!) across all the papers and pictures I have lining my walls. I glared over at him and sent him a mental telegraph that he better not disrupt me in my hunt or he would seriously not only be evicted but also really dead. I heard the mouse in the bathroom and flicked the light on him. He started and climbed into the bottom cupboard. Which I promptly closed and locked.

I sat back again in the dark to ensure he was indeed in there, a suspicion confirmed when I heard him chewing through a plastic bag. I grabbed the duct tape and sealed him in there. Now the only thing left to do is wait. Which I’ve got plenty of time to do in Seronga.

I tried to play nice with the mouse and give him some options to get the hell out but as you can see, he just wouldn’t compromise. As I sit here writing (at 1:30 in the morning, incidentally) I bask in the glow of murderous torture. Back somewhere in the catacombs of my mind where my criminology degree resides I seem to recall that a reliable indicator for future murderer/sociopath/serial killers is taking joy in torturing and killing small animals. I wonder if being 27 I’ve outgrown the statute of limitations that says this generally begins in childhood. And then I wonder if any of the shrinks who decided this ever had to live in a round cement hut in a rural African village. In the end I figure I’ll probably be fine, as really, what the hell, the Peace Corps gave me psychological clearance to serve in this crazy place.

I can now hear him scratching increasingly desperately to get out. The only options he’s left with are poisoning himself by ingesting plastic bags, or attempting to chew through the duct tape seal (which I don’t think he can even reach with the door locked) which will certainly bugger up his tiny digestive system, starvation or suffocation.

I lay back in my bed (under the net, telepathic threats to the lizard ongoing) with the intention of deciding what spiritual path I might pursue now that Buddhism is so clearly off the table, and drift off to sleep victorious.




LATER THAT NIGHT
4:30am. Well I certainly am a smug bastard, now aren’t I? I seem to have overlooked one of the most important lessons from my last battle with mice-which is that they always come in twos. With his counterpart nestled (trapped) safely in the bottom cupboard of my cabinet, (which, it has incidentally just occurred to me, is where I have hidden my m&m’s from myself, so he’s not actually going to die of starvation unless chocolate kills mice like I’ve heard it can kill dogs… probably unlikely) the other bandit has decided to make his presence known. Wonderful. I flash the light at this one, we dance around the room trying to decide who’s going to run for safety first. I fake him out and he runs around the room, eventually setting off the trap, ensnaring his hind foot and tail. This of course sets him squealing, which sets me to squealing, so we’re squealing together in my room/house at 4:30 in the morning.

This lasts a few minutes (well I suppose it was seconds but you know how time moves slowly during these incidents) until I decide that one of us must take action to end this nightmare and it appeared with him writhing in the trap that it was gonna have to be me, as he was otherwise disposed. I stop squealing, which means I can now only hear his squealing, which is starting to turn my stomach. I’m shaking my hands around like a gay man at a fill-in-your-favorite stereotypical diva (Barbara Steisand, Madonna, Cher, Tina Turner ect) concert. (Most of which I’ve been to or would kill for tickets to- thus confirming to me that I must have been a gay man in a past life.) fanning prevent myself from heaving (ok, Sis, you win. I am not, nor shall I ever be the mighty hunter-woman-animal-killer that you are. I am the weakest link).

I grabbed for the nearest thing that falls into the “weapon” category in my overly exhausted mind, which happens to be DOOM bug killer stuff. The shit doesn’t really work on large spiders, so what I thought it was going to do to this beast is beyond me. It just caused it to scream louder. It briefly crossed my mind from my brief perusal of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” in college and extensive perusal of a Vanity Fair article on war crimes that what I was doing to this mouse probably more than constituted torture, cruel and inhumane treatment as I realized the DOOM had just covered the thing’s coat in a greasy film. I reached for the plastic dustpan and scooped him and the trap up and thrashed through the netting covering my doorway to get outside. I dumped him onto the step where he really began to thrash in earnest, and had gotten his leg free, and was now held in by just his tail.

Now I don’t know any of your feelings on retribution and karma, dear readers, but even on the few hours of sleep I had gotten I know that my aura was going to be more than mussed up if I didn’t end this thing pretty quickly. (Perhaps there are more than a few things previously dating a minister can’t clear up?) And so with that I wielded the plastic dustbin and bashed the mouse on the head. This caused him to seize and I began to gag. I won’t go into anymore detail than to say that there was blood, and that I, unlike the mouse, managed to keep my innards about me. My front step was completely gruesome.


THE NEXT MORNING

The next morning, in light of my grisly murder the night before, I couldn’t bear to deal with what was awaiting me in the cupboard. I could hear the other mouse in there crunching happily on my m&m’s and went about super cleaning the rest of my house (as any good psychopath avoiding a guilty conscience will do) so as to deter any other unwanted guests while I was away camping in the bush for the weekend.

My plan was now to wait until the 2 British guys (from Bana Ba Metsi that I had met a few weekends back) got here. We had planned to go camping at Tsodilo, but when transport fell through we decided to head out into the site where the Queen’s new backpackers will be put up (I’m not even going into the miracles of transport that did happen to get us out that side). Because a) there were two of them and b) I couldn’t handle another scene at my own hand, I decided to let the guys deal with it. With the machisimo that only 2 18 year olds can muster, they opened the door, assuring me that they dealt with such things as pythons and other beasts of the bush “all the time”. They began removing the contents of the cupboard slowly, when Drew yelped and Nick jumped out of the path of the mouse, who made a beeline under my bed.


THREE DAYS LATER

I would have to commission Drew to inform you of what the dead animals (it seems that lizard got his in the end as well) looked like at this point, but I can only tell you it was one of the worst smells I’ve encountered here or anywhere.

Until Next Time Then….. The End!