A Tom and Jerry show, without the Tom.

As is to be expected in an apartment beleaguered by nocturnal vermin, I was again woken up at 3 am last night to the skittering of little mousey paws.  

A couple of days ago, I confirmed the furry presence when I walked into what will be my office (when I have furniture, internet, and my paralyzing fear of rodents has subsided) and saw the little thing scurry across the floor. I screamed, like one sees in movies and cartoons of 1950s housewives, and would certainly have leapt up onto something--this time, the lack of furniture prevented my own shame--had I the chance.  I recovered quickly, shut the door to the office, an did this:

This method of using spare cardboard to plug up the inordinate gaps and spaces that plague New York apartments is new to me, because the last time I lived in New York the gaps and spaces were frankly too large and I didn't have any cardboard. I see it as a sure sign of progress that nearly all of my walls meet at the corners and that no part of my apartment has any sign of spray-foam insulation peeking out into living areas.

I then avoided the office for 2 days, hoping that by sheer force of will I could remove the varmint from my home. Or at the very least, contain it while I found a humane trap (when I say humane, I mean: "instant-death" not "namby-pamby release into the forest") and some Peppermint Oil to spray everywhere.

I have yet to acquire either of these things, because apparently New Yorkers in the Bronx only use poison and glue traps, and I have not yet made it anywhere else.

Perhaps as a result of my slow response, the creature became emboldened.  I awoke to a fully lit kitchen, as I have been sleeping with the light on in hopes of tricking nocturnal creatures into staying away. My face is, after all, only 6 inches from the floor, and the last thing I want is a face-to-face encounter with anything that uses more legs than I do to ambulate.
I looked toward the fridge. Thence came the mouse, quite curiously tailed not by other mice, and additionally curiously, not looking for food. This mouse had done something terrible to another resident of the apartment. This mouse was on the lam.

From a two-inch house centipede.

On the one hand, it gave me extreme pleasure to note that the tribes of vermin in my place embark upon their own special brand of civil strife.  I also enjoyed the image of the much larger, much cuter mouse fleeing from what essentially looks like a mutant Daddy-Long-Legs, and for a moment contemplated the following scenario:

House Centipedes in Little Italy, in order to fully cope with the hard-knock Bronx lifestyle, did what any self respecting downtrodden creature in need of power might. They formed a House Centipede Mafia.*  This explains the lack of scary bugs in my apartment, the dominance of the House Centipede, the fear apparent on the mouse's squinchy little rodent face, and the remains of tiny cigars and itty bitty bottles of red wine I find near the baseboards.

After I recovered from this obviously half-asleep delusion, and stopped laughing, I did what any sane person would do. I picked up my can of Raid, and went after the one I could kill.

Here's hoping it wasn't the Don.




Notes:
* I don't actually know anything about the history of organized crime, and suspect that Mafias actually form elsewise. But just imagine Legs McGee holding not one but twenty ice-picks and an uzi. You'd flee, too.