I have been deprived of modern technology (internet, tv, proper cell phone service) for the better part of the past 4 months and I’m going to be honest, it was f-ing great. I was living in this ramshackle house in the middle of the woods in central Pennsylvania with five other young ladies. I could tell you what I was doing there because it was pretty interesting but for now I think a post about the house I was living in takes priority.
Now, I had visited this house before when my old college roommate was living there in the springtime with different housemates that I did not know and never ended up meeting. One step in the house and I knew I did not want to be there. It was messy and gross. Really flipping gross. There was an enormous garbage can inside the dining room area that was literally overflowing with trash. The kitchen area was equally nasty. Crusty pots and pans filled the sink. Weird neon colored goo seeped from the fridge. The living room was just this shamble of odd chairs and random furniture pieces placed in no particular fashion. I won’t even go into what the bathroom looked like. The downstairs, where most of the bedrooms were, scared the hell out of me. It was dark and damp. I was essentially covering my eyes when my friend showed me her sleeping quarters. I wanted to get the F out of this place immediately.
As fate would have it, I moved into that hell-hole of a house about three months later. Terrifying memories helped me prepare for the worst when I stepped into my new home for the second time. I was relieved to see that it had been cleaned and the odd dresser drawers in the middle of the living room had been cleared out. Someone even had the courtesy to throw out the trash. It actually wasn’t so bad. I was the fourth person to arrive so I had three bedrooms to choose from. All of the rooms left were located in the dark and scary basement. It didn’t take me long to pick the bigger of the rooms, although it was still the size of a closet. Also, it didn’t have any windows. The upside was that it had a private door out to the backyard. That door was the deciding factor for me. Of course it took a little bit of getting used to when I would wake up in the pitch black, look at my clock and think “oh, shit! it’s 12:30 in the afternoon” but I grew to love that cave of a room.
Thankfully, my housemates were fairly clean so our little house didn’t get too gross and when it did I cleaned it. I mean, with no modern distractions what else did I have to do? I didn’t mind vacuuming or washing all of the dishes that people had neglected once in a while. I will admit that our house constantly reeked of curry and ginger. It was hard to get mad, though. Our housemate, Goldenrod, truly an old and unique soul, had some pretty extreme dietary restrictions and would always be brewing strange teas and cooking with those familiar spices. Overall, life in the woods was good.
Then, winter came.
As the weather got colder bad things started happening at the house. It was the week of Thanksgiving when most of my housemates left to visit their families in other states. I stayed behind with two others and that is when things turned awry. It all started with copious amounts of mouse shit at the bottom of the stairs, conveniently located near a giant gnawed hole in the wall. Then, came the stories. Every morning my housemates would talk about how many mice they saw scurrying in their room the night before. Sometimes in the morning they would tell me about the mouse shit they found on their beds. Their BEDS (and pillow, once).
Naturally, we set up a mousetrap and put it near that giant mouse hole at the bottom of the stairs. We caught a couple mice over those next few days. Sometimes I would be watching a movie upstairs and hear a loud SNAP and I would smile, knowing that we got another little fucker.
I think I failed to mention in this story that I have a terrible fear of mice. I could go into the history of my rampant rodent phobia, but that is a story for another day. Even though I had not yet witnessed a mouse in my room, or seen mouse excrement for that matter, I was scared shitless at night. I couldn’t sleep for days. I would turn off my lights and turn on my iPod and listen to it for hours to drown out any possible mousey sounds of scampering or gnawing. One night I heard loud clanging and furious chewing coming from the hallway. I knew right away what was happening. A mouse had gotten caught in the trap, but only part way, so it was trying to gnaw its way back into his hole, trap and all. I waited patiently until my other housemate handled the situation (the mouse eventually freed himself and fled the scene). Another time I drifted into a very light sleep when I was suddenly awoken by the sound of a rustling plastic bag from the near corner of my room. I was too afraid to turn my light on but I pounded on my bed frame and the rustling stopped. In the morning I discovered a bunch of mouse shit in my trash can. It was my fault, really. I had thrown out some old peanut butter fudge in there. Well, I learned my lesson and never again did I keep food in my room. The mice never bothered me again.
My housemates weren’t so lucky. My friend, who lived in the room next to mine, came back from her holiday to discover a true shit show. Mouse shit everywhere- on high shelves (who knew mice could scale bare walls?), under sheets, inside dresser drawers (and, consequently, on clothes). And it wasn’t just mouse shit. The mice had found some ramen noodles and decided that they wanted to dine amongst her clothes in the dresser. Oh, and of course there was urine.
Time passed and so did my insomnia. Miraculously, the mice ignored my cave room. I only had one actual mouse sighting and that was on my last weekend living at that house. I was in my friend’s room, the one that got seriously fucked over by them, and I saw a flash of gray out of the corner of my eye. It was a literal flash from one corner of the small room to the other. I ran out of the room and into my mouse free room, where I hide behind my door. “I know what I saw!” I shrieked.
One time we complained to the higher ups about our mouse infestation problems. They just laughed at us and said something to the extent of, “it’s all a part of the experience”. And you know what, I think they were right. Looking back I don’t think I would have wanted it any other way.
*I feel that it is necessary to add that a minute or so after I published this piece I went downstairs into my kitchen to get a drink. There, on the stove, was a GIANT mouse. The first mouse I’ve seen in my house in years. What the fudge?!
