Okay, so we have a mouse problem. Or a mice problem.

One thing is for certain, I have not seen more than one at a time. But I am not sure if it’s the same mouse I see (or, more often, hear) every time, or a different one. I have not noticed anything remarkable like a bitten ear or something for me to distinguish if it’s the big bad boy Johnny from the dumps who got that cut in a deadly alley pipe fight, or his little timid brother Joey with a pink feet fetish.

I had been noticing the signs for a few days. Food stuff or some random shavings found at the odd place, bite marks on my tatami. I brushed them off as, oh maybe it was Chanchal, my partner, having a midnight snack or something. (Not the bite marks on the tatami. That would be concerning, for both of us.)

And so, it continued for some days till one day, as the day always arrives when the phantom sound finally gets a face attached to it, or feet, whichever is your preference… One day, I was sitting on the couch, reading a book, and I look to my side and there it is… this tiny little thing, with two little ears and an eager nose, right there, on the mat, looking around with shiny eyes, taking its sweet time. I really wanted to reach out and say, “Hey sir, would you like a shopping bag with that?”, “Can I interest you in our special menu for the day? The usual snack stash? How about we try some cardboard or fabric for a change?”

When I lived in Chandigarh in India, I had a room on the roof. I traded amenities for independent living, I guess, when I picked that place to stay during my research. Don’t get me wrong, it had its own charms. The clouds came down on my roof top at night, I never had my fill of seeing the stars so close. The rain brought its own charms as I looked out through my little window at the hustle bustle of the street.

But my god, did I fight some wild battles there.

I remember the first time a cat walked into my room. That was heavenly. But soon other things followed. Not so heavenly.

It started with ground attack. Cockroaches. Oh man, it was not good. Nope. They had this strange way of creeping up suddenly. Sometimes, I would be working on my thesis for hours in the middle of the night till I began to see spots in front of my eyes and in my peripheral vision, there it would be, a lone cockroach, scuttling along the floor. At first, I always thought it was a figment of my imagination. But turns out, it was a real cockroach almost always.

Now trust me, I kept that floor cleaner than a church alter every single day. Like crazy. (Something to do with the avoidance strategy I had developed to cope with my denial around procrastination.)

So, I have no idea why they came. Or for what.

But the cockroach was very much there, scurrying around, ceaselessly, and then suddenly pausing like Inspector Clouseau, its moustache twitching, looking vacantly into space.

As if that was all. But no. This was a ground attack that could at any moment turn into an aerial attack. Ever heard of the flying cockroach? The most terrible thing made by nature.

You had to keep an eye on that cockroach, from the other end of the room and pray to God there was only one of them. Which was scarcely the case.

And in the list of beings to keep an eye on, there is also another. Much more terrible. The lizard, the terrible terrible lizard.

Don’t ask why, I just can’t stand them!

It is hard enough that lizards often have those dead reptilian eyes and always make those guttural grating sounds from the corner of the roof to let you know they are watching you when you are trying hard to be oblivious to them. But what is scarier is when unknown to you, they decide to walk all the way, upside down, crawling on the roof, stop right over your head and then blissfully in an amnesiac erasure forget their one superpower, how to stay glued to the roof, and decide to give in to gravity, pretending that falling on your head and into your t-shirt was a happy accident.

Also having a fan overhead doesn’t help the matters.

And oh, don’t get me started on the night the termites grew wings, much to the glee of the lizards. That horrible night, the termites took flight by a thousand inside my apartment, and I happened to have somehow bought the tickets to that annual feast and celebration. I spent the night in a tent inside my blanket, warding off invaders and trying to reach my landlord. In the morning, I was left to deal with the aftereffects of their infernal debauchery through the night. I swooped their wings away as the newly wed couples that survived decided to settle in for the year. The lizards were nowhere in sight. Probably too gorged to stay up.

Did you know that lizards generally don’t have long periods of deep sleep like mammals? Instead, they go into a more restful, inactive state where they remain alert to their surroundings, but their energy levels drop. They might nap or be in a state of torpor, especially if it’s cold, and some species even “sleep” with their eyes partially open. Talk about a horror story.

I have had a mouse problem before too, you know, when I was living in Chandigarh. It was much more sinister in some ways. Because you see, that mouse travelled by the kitchen pipe and also had a fixed haunting hour. Since I was a night owl in those days, I always heard the clanging in the pipes exactly at midnight. That was one punctual mouse. But it had the eerie punctuality of a haunting ghost.

Or maybe I had been reading Bram Stocker’s “The Judge’s House” in those days.

Anyways, that mouse had tasted the freedom of hunting on the apartment grounds and looting my storage areas. And it was out for blood every night. It resented that I was awake at that hour that clearly belonged to it as nature intended and no amount of clanging back on the pipes discouraged its ascent.

Anyways, with time, I almost figured out how to deal with all this jungle madness.

I closed off some of the spots from where the termites had emerged. Sealed the pipe from where the mouse tried to get in. Sprayed a line of control with a pesticide to repel the cockroaches without having to kill them or suffocate myself.

I just stayed out of the way of the lizards.

And I would have won the war.

If they had not called for back up.

Once, I was working at night and heard this low hum, almost imperceptible at first. Then it grew stronger, and I looked up, and at first couldn’t make anything out, staring right into the blinding light bulb, till in a flash I saw their terrible silhouettes as the descended. Wasps!

They darted trying to make headway for my eyes with precision and speed. I covered myself with the blanket and prayed to God they had not infiltrated my emergency camp. Slowly, I could hear their humming again as they glided around the walls with military-like coordination, buzzing aggressively as they swooped through the air, their sleek yellow bodies slicing through the space with deadly intent.

I tried to take a small peek. They were circling, scouting for any sign of weakness, poised for the next move.

But that was not all that was happening.

The pipe in the kitchen began to clang, and taking the rodent’s midnight clanging at the jail bars as a battle cry, three cockroaches decided to encroach over the control line and claimed my room’s floor as their territory.

I was surrounded.

I lost the battle that day.

Of course, I spent the coming days looking for ways to repel wasps. Whoever wrote the article about spraying soap water on wasps clearly didn’t have any combat experience. You cannot spray anything at wasps without turning them into fiery little devils on wings who are willing to go kamikaze on you.

So, when I say I have a mouse problem now, to me it is like trying to resolve a skirmish in the neighborhood as a retired veteran.

Also, I have become too soft now. I almost find the little guy cute.

Anyways, with nothing better to do and trying to avoid the traps, I placed a complaint on the apartment portal. They sent a young guy, who informed us that apparently, the mice had overtaken the middle wall of all the apartments in the building and used it as a sort of travel channel to hunt for food. And the apartment authorities had given in, a sort of peaceful avoidance and denial of the problem. They sent people over to attend to the problem as more of a band aid solution.

Anyways, this guy was dedicated to help us out and ended up closing many of the openings to prevent them from entering the apartment. He commended the clay work we had done to close off some mouse holes on our own. And truth be told, we did not see a mouse for months.

(However, strangely, the water service in the apartment did get disrupted that day.

I like to believe that had nothing to do with the mice mafia.)

Anyways, over time maybe, there was some understanding between the apartment authorities and the whiskered gang to avoid our apartment for some time to throw us off the scent.

But after a few months, of course, the mouse was back.

I knew it, I could sense it for sure. But I was in denial. Those unaccountable shadows in the dark. Those crinkling sounds between the wrappers when it got dark enough.

I just wanted the peaceful times to be back.

I did not lay down any traps. At first, I relied on wishful thinking.

Then I told myself, well, mice have the right to this planet too and they do not believe in paying rent to be on this land that nature intended for them to be on. How brave and revolutionary!

Then, one day, I ordered some ultrasonic pest repellant lights in a shopping spree.

And oh boy, they surely made an impact.

But not the kind I was hoping for.

I woke up the next day and found my peace lily toppled to one side, half of its roots gone, with a huge pile of soil on the floor by the side.

Maybe they went mad because of all those blue light waves.

But I understood, being a veteran. They had left a message for me.

This was an invitation to war.

I was furious! They had done it. They had crossed the line of control.

I made another complaint and the old guy who walked in this time had been in the army.

Exactly what this battle needed.

He wore a cowboy hat, was tall with broad shoulders, sported a bit of a beer belly.

This guy was ready to hunt some mice.

Or something bigger, if the opportunity were to present itself.

He said he had hunted before.

Talking of hare, he mentioned how they were introduced to Vancouver Island in 1960s and tended to reproduce at a crazy speed. And something about the Helmcken highway interchange where people drop off their pet rabbits. I checked it later and this is what I found online:

People in Victoria, BC, have been dealing with an overabundant rabbit population. The rabbits have burrowed under buildings at the University of Victoria, creating tunnels that undermined their foundations. Neighbors have discovered baby bunnies on construction sites, but there is nowhere for them to go. The BC SPCA has limited capacity to house them and requires a specific quarantine due to a lethal and highly infectious rabbit hemorrhagic disease. Non-profit groups like Vancouver Island Fluffle have turned away abandoned domestic rabbits due to the high number of abandoned rabbits they can’t take in. The provincial government is also discouraging people from dropping off their rabbits at the Helmcken highway interchange in Victoria.

I looked over at Chanchal who had bunnies as pets when he was young, (who got eaten by cats, thereby making him wary of cats), and he looked alarmed.

“You know if you ever have extra rabbits on you, a good rule of thumb is to drop them at the pet store,” added the guy as he bent over to look behind the fridge.

And we nodded. Sure, that would at least cheer up a kid looking to buy a rabbit as a pet.

He continued, “Because, after all, they need something to feed the snakes there.”

We gulped. That surely had our attention. I also began to notice something else.

Unlike the last guy, this one had no interest in sealing any mouse holes. That was not his concern. In his books, battles could not possibly be fought by simply building fortresses and praying that the enemy goes away because their favorite joint was closed for the night and decides to order from Uber Eats instead.

This guy was not trying to prevent mice from coming into the apartment.

He wanted them to come crawling. By the thousand.

He wanted them to get trapped.

And die.

One by one.

For eternity.

He was all about laying traps. He placed them in-between the book piles. Behind the couch, under the bed, inside a cupboard. I later used most of those traps to circle my peace lily because it couldn’t survive another attack and to my mind, if a mouse still wanted to go for it, it was asking for death.

Anyways, over the next few days, things kept getting stuck in the traps.

Everything.

Except mice.

First to go was my broom that I had to cut free with a pair of scissors. Next to go was my favorite sock.

And then, one time, it was me.

Don’t ask.

A part of me was glad. I don’t like killing living things.

(Except fried chicken. That is controversial. Sort of a gustatory martyrdom. No comments on that one.)

Anyways, after the last sighting, I sort of ended up making my peace with it.

The mouse has been staying away from my plants. So that’s good.

In a way, we have a roommate now. Also, since Chanchal stays up late into the night, I am glad he has some company.

And anyways, I get the message that if I try anything funny, I am going to hear back from them the next day.

In case you have important information regarding keeping mice at bay, do not respond here because I am sure, they are keeping some noses on this blog too. They can smell mutiny.

Maybe we can find a different ultrasonic way to communicate.

And maybe having a cat can help. Though I seriously doubt that.

It clearly wouldn’t work with cats being cats these days:

Moreover, I might land into more whiskered trouble. I am sure, my tatami and plants don’t stand a chance.

For now, this makeshift peace of bite marks and bits and pieces, continues.

Till the next cry for battle.