About a week ago, my roommate and I were having a great roommate night. We'd been talking for a while about stuff. Lots of stuff. And then she was going to bed. So she was in the bathroom getting ready (which is located between our two bedrooms, which are found on the left side of the house if you're looking into the house from the front door.) I was sitting with my back to our bedroom area on the papazan in the livingroom, when I heard this scratching sound.

"Probably Erin opening and closing the cabinets in the bathroom," my brain told me, in an attempt to not REALLY analyze the sound.

However, the sound persisted. And it most assuredly was NOT coming from the bathroom, where the only other living creature in the house besides myself was located.

Or at least, the only other living creature that was supposed to be in the house.

Finally, I was sure that the sound was coming from the kitchen, and that it was not one I could easily explain away or shrug off. Having had a mouse crawling on my bed at about 3am several months ago (I woke up and moved, and heard it scurrying down the sheets hanging off the side of my bed), and having seen one in the living room a few nights after that, I had a pretty good feeling I knew exactly what was causing the sound.

As I slowly got off the papazan and walked into the dining room (from which I have a direct line of vision into most of the kitchen), my thoughts were confirmed. There, on the cookie sheet on which were still stuck some cookies my roommate had tried to bake the night before, sat one plump little mouse, contentedly scraping off bits of cookies and chomping them into his plump little belly.

"AAAUUUGGHHH!! Mouse!" I said/screamed, just loud enough to get my roommate's attention through at least two closed doors and maybe running water.

Now, here's the difference between Erin and I. I like rodents. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to hand-feed some squirrels on my last trip to DC, and was really happy when one even crawled up on my lap. Just so long as they're not biting me and infecting me with rabies, rodents are nice. I keep pet gerbils. I love my pet gerbils. (Right now, they're being kept by someone else as Erin is terribly allergic to all aminals, but I still do love my gerbils.) I loved sitting at my second-story kitchen window last year and watching all the squirrels play on the first-floor roof and jump from the branches of the big oak tree in the backyard/driveway. I enjoy watching my pet gerbils play with eachother (the girls I have have a bar hanging from the roof of their cage that once belonged to a toy. One of the funnest things my gerbils can do is when they do pull-ups on that bar. It's really great!)

I like watching hamsters, mice, guinea pigs, and even less-cute animals like rats, and less-rodenty animals like bats, as they all go about their daily lives. Rodents are fascinating creatures. They do really neat things.

However, having a mouse that might have rabies in my home, especially since he's probably related to the same one that had enough gall to crawl onto my bed and probably crawl right up to my skin, is not such a cute or fascinating thing. I don't want to kill the poor things, I just want to get them back outside, where they belong.

(The fact that there's a lot of construction going on across the street explains a great deal of our sudden mouse-tresspassers-increase.)

Erin, on the other hand, is not a fan of rodents of any kind. She shudders to think that I actually keep some as pets. She's terrified to know that I let a squirrel sit on my lap in DC. She hates to see rodents on TV (and she can watch surgury or lions eating gazelles, mind you) and she hates even more to see them in person. Getting to see a snake eating a rodent is, to her, a cause for great rejoicing.

This is the difference between my roommate and I.

So when I let her know that we had a mouse in her kitchen (at which point the mouse fled to the floor and behind the oven), she came rushing out in a very unhappy way.

We spent the next 20 to 45 minutes (funny how one loses track of time when one is trying to get a teeny creature out of a huge space) thinking up ways to get the mouse back outside. Despite her hatred of rodents, Erin would still rather not kill them when an alternative exists, and she does also understand that watching animals die is nearly enough to make me vomit. (I'm not a vegetarian.. as long as it's already dead and looking nothing like it's living form when I get it, I'm fine. But actually SEEING something give up the ghost is not my cup-o-tea.)

So we talked, we plotted, we schemed. Every five minutes or so, the brave little toas.. er.. mouse would stick his head out from between the oven and the cabinet. When he was on the cookie sheet and I was across the room, he seemed HUGE. However, when he stuck his tiny little head out, he looked like he was no bigger than a quarter. Or at least no bigger than a very large grape.

And he had these massive, bulging, yet somehow beady eyes. They stuck out from his head like extra limbs. As black as the blackest piece of coal, and yet belonging to a creature much less pleasant.

Finally, we made something of a maze-like pathway from the other side of the oven out the backdoor. And while I blocked the way between the oven and the door, Erin banged at the counter-side with the broom to scare the little rascel out from his safe-place. He shot out of there faster than a speeding bullet, and has not yet been seen again.

Mouse-sighting paranoia reigns on high at our house now, though.