Sunday, January 11, 2009

Mouse Trap


I was absolutely disgusted with this little black creature who was determined to be my spoilt brat pet. It came at all times of the day, and gnawed at my food in my pantry. I had to throw out so much.

We tried setting traps, and occassionally, we trapped it's cousin. One had been particularly annoying, and before the water engineer went traipsing in Australia, I asked him to fix the trap, but in his busyiness, he forgot. 

I bought a couple more traps, but found I forgot how to set it. I couldn't ask my neighbours who are Hindus as they don't believe in killing animals. So I went to D, my other neighbour. her father-in-law is a pastor, and he didn't know either.

Eventually, I found that there was a catch to the trap, changed the bait and within three hours, caught the wretched thing. My brother Joseph told me that there will probably be more, I needed to get new traps as the mice won't go to the one that had trapped one of them. Sure enough, we saw another yesterday.  I boiled a whole jug of water and disinfected the traps but nothing has happened yet.

Once, I was at a Navigator's camp and we were clearing up when I saw a mouse. I clung up to this late teen, a friend's brother. He didn't know how to react. Everyone thought it was funny. Why was I, such a big woman afraid of a teeny weeny mouse?

Just in case you want to report to SPCA on me, hear me out. My hatred and phobia is deep and go back a long way before I was ten years old. In Sibu, we had floods every year, sometimes the flood water as deep as once's thigh. Mother had her veg patch as raised beds. During the flood, the edges of the beds were lined with rats and mice. I just had a lesson on the London plague. It was this association of the rats and mice spreading the plague that gave me this deep rooted fear. 

Now, my anger has made me strong enough to set the traps but not overcomed my phobia. When I caught that stupid mouse, luckily my young brave friend M was happy to dispose of it for me.

No comments: