The Triple Ick Factor

In order to fully appreciate the ickiness of this, let me take you back a few weeks. Nothing special was going on, but I was in the middle of reading a rather absorbing book, and so quite often you could find me perched on the sofa in the living room. Now my living room just doesn't get used that often. If I don't have guests over, I'm not normally in there. Anyway, I'm in there, and I am convinced I smell something rotting...

I figure it's a piece of fruit and so I start sniffing around, but I couldn't find a thing. Shortly after, my friend Jude comes over, so we have a seat in the living room and chat, and I ask her a few times if she can smell anything, but she can't.

After Jude leaves, I seriously start sniffing everything in sight, I pull the sofa cushions off, I carefully shove my hand down the backs of the sofas, I move the sofas, and nothing!

Eventually I just give up, but over the next four or five days I keep smelling something and continue to search it out. I never find a thing. Now fast forward to yesterday. Jade came over, and we were sitting in the living room, enjoying a smell-free zone btw.

Anyway, Jade and I do what friends do best, we are mid babble, when suddenly I start talking about my room and how it's just not appealing to me. So Jade looks around and says she likes the room. Then she pops up, and goes and sits across from where she was, flops down in a chair covered in cat hair, surveys the room and says, "Hmm, needed a new perspective, and, wow everything looks different from this side of the room. I don't think I like it either!"

Panicked with this news I start to foam at the mouth. How can my home not be envied by everyone entering? How can someone actually not like it! This is disaster and a change must be made. So we discuss options for moving the furniture around and finally come to the conclusion the only way we can really tell what will look good, is to actually move the furniture. So we do. It was rather fun! Partway through the process I look at the clock and freak out, and stop mid moving, to tell Jade I have to make a phone call. I walk off to find the portable phone, and leave Jade on her own with the sofa. She decides she can probably move it if she gets the area rug a bit out of the way. It was about then I hear a screech and then Jade screaming at me, "Put down the phone, and get in here! Put down the phone and GET IN IN HERE RIGHT NOW!" Now in my description, it sounds kind of like she was ordering me around, but in reality there was a note of hysteria in her voice and it was more like she was imploring me to get over there before she died.

So I go back in there, and she says to me, "There's a dead mouse under the corner of the carpet, and it's been squished." My immediate thought was, "Gah, I didn't expect Jade to be so stupid, everyone keeps thinking those little toy mice I bought for the cats are real, but whatever. Just pick up the carpet Swapna and you will be able to calm her down."

So I lift the edge of the carpet...and, well, in retrospect, it's kinda hugely funny. There was indeed a dead mouse there, as for saying it was squished, that's a huge understatement. The poor thing had been flattened to a pancake...actually even a pancake is fluffier! Now upon seeing this squished mouse, I did feel a bit icky, so I run into the kitchen thinking, DONT PANIC, DONT PANIC...Jade is panicking, you must not panic!

I grab a roll of paper towels and a plastic bag and run back in there, pull off a wad of paper towel, bend down and assume I will just pick the flattened mouse off the floor and drop it in the plastic bag. WRONG! the damn thing is stuck, and I mean glued to the floor. I did my fingers in a bit, trying not to break through the paper towels, thinking I can pry it off the floor. It doesn't budge. I'm about to say I can't do it, when I look at Jade. She's an awful shade of white, her eyes are bugging out of her head, and I think she might faint. So I steel myself and dig my fingers into that floor! You hear a sickening crunching noise as I slowly peel the body away from the floor and then place it in the trash. Meanwhile I survey my handiwork and see that a fur outline of the dead mouse has been left behind. Kind of like a designer detective chalk outline of the murder victim.

So I get the pine sol, bleach, basically any cleaning supply that might disinfect and hose down that area, hoping I will be able to easily scrape off the leftover fur in a bit.

Through all of this I have remained rather calm. I clean it up, we relax, sit on the sofas and sip some juice reflecting on the moment, when suddenly we both realize that I obviously stepped on the creature and didn't even know it. So Jade says to me, "See this is why you shouldn't wear your shoes in the house!" (I'm a stickler for wearing something on my feet at all times...if I go barefoot my Achilles tendon hurts)

So anyway, I start thinking about the mouse and how it might have found itself in this predicament. I figure that corner of the area rug kind of curls up, so probably the cats brought the mouse in to torture, then when it was dead or unconscious, one of them batted it under that flip up corner, at which point, yours truly stomped all over it like an elephant. How could I not feel the thing!!! ICK, man bones must have been crunching...ICK ICK

A couple of seconds later, I remember the smell I had been searching for. So I realize that dead mouse has probably been lying there for a month while I happily trod over it every single day...ICK ICK ICK. That was the triple ick factor for me.

Ode to the Mouse

So sorry Mr. Mouse,
I really didn't mean to be as fat as a house.

Stepping on your little spine
I never noticed it snap
probably because of all the wine
Before I squished you,
then lay down for a nap.

So sorry Mr. Mouse,
I really do feel like a louse

Day after day, grinding you into my floor,
Okay now the ick factor is up to four!

-Swapna